George Stanford Tolley (born November 18, 1925) is an agricultural economist at the University of Chicago. Along with the faculty at the University of Chicago, he has worked on the faculty of North Carolina State University. In 1965-1966, he was Director of the Economic Development Division of the Economic Research Service at the US Department of Agriculture, and in 1974-1975 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary and Director of the Office of Tax Analysis at the US Department of Treasury.
Tolley graduated from American University with a bachelor in economics in 1947. Tolley received his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, receiving his PhD in 1955. During that period, Chicago was a leader in agricultural economics under the leadership of Theodore Schultz and D. Gale Johnson, largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Tolley’s performance as a graduate student was very strong, and he was a major intellectual and administrative leader among the graduate students. He worked with a number of graduate students who became prominent in the field, particularly Robert L. Gustafson, Conrad Gislason, Cleon Harrell, Seymour Smidt, Hendrick Houthakker, Lester Tesler, Clifford Hildreth, and F. G. Jarrett.