Scottish-born economist and statistician whose work as a publicist did much to assure general acceptance of the economic principles of his contemporary, the economist David Ricardo.

A student of political economy, McCulloch wrote articles for The Edinburgh Review (1816–37), edited the leading liberal newspaper, The Scotsman (1818–20), and taught political economy at University College, London (1828–32). In 1832 he published his Dictionary of Practical, Theoretical, and Historical Commerce and Commercial Navigation, later largely incorporated into his Statistical Account of the British Empire (1837), both authoritative reference works.

McCulloch's Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects and Importance of Political Economy (1824) has been considered the first formal history of economic thought. His annotated editions of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1828) and of Works of David Ricardo (1846) and his bibliographic work, The Literature of Political Economy (1845), were pioneer studies in economic historiography.