Nick Hartley, who has died aged 80, was a respected economist and in the 1990s served as head of energy, economics and statistics at the Department of Trade and Industry.

His reputation was made as chief economist at Oftel (the Office of Telecommunications) for six years from 1984. He was then chief economist at the Department of the Environment (1990-94), before becoming head of energy, economics and statistics at the DTI, a post, he liked to point out, once held by Harold Wilson. In 1996, Nick joined the economic consultancy Oxera, from where he was seconded to the Cabinet Office to head up a report on energy policy.

Born in London, the only child of Nancy (nee Fulton), a dressmaker, and Edward Hartley, a publican, Nick went to St Clement Danes grammar school, Hammersmith, where he and I met in 1955. Sitting side by side in assembly for the headteacher’s address to the new boys, he introduced himself: “Hello, I’m Hartley, like the jam.”

In the sixth form we were told by our economics teacher, Jack Harvey, to apply to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, to study economics. We arrived in 1962 during a winter so cold that the River Granta froze, and Nick and I would walk on it to Grantchester.

After graduating, Nick passed the civil service exam and became assistant principal at the Department for Education, where he worked for JAR Pimlott setting up polytechnics (1965-69). From there, he moved to the Treasury as an economic adviser (1969-84). He was seconded from the Treasury twice, in 1970-71 to do an MPhil at York University, and in 1974-77, to the Royal Commission on the Press.

Latterly he was a companion of the Guild of St George, a charity for arts and crafts founded by John Ruskin who, Nick said, “was asking all the right questions about the way work and society should be organised”. Nick travelled throughout Italy with Ruskin’s work in mind, and artistic interests were central to his life.

He wrote several books, including The Prince of Privateers (2012), a life of one of his forebears who was on the British side in the American war of independence, and Monuments Officer (2012), a novel.

An enthusiastic theatregoer, as an undergraduate he played Lucky in a production of Waiting for Godot. After hearing Bob Dylan’s second album in 1962 he became a lifelong fan of the musician. He was also a keen reader of the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, so after watching a film at Cambridge, whether Hammer horror or Truffaut, he would give notes on “auteur theory”.

The novelist and playwright Nigel Williams described Nick as having a “unique brisk theatricality”. Perfect words with which to preserve my own memories of him, particularly as the briskness often involved the sort of expansive gestures that put any wine glasses on a table at risk.

Nick is survived by Jenny (nee Stern), whom he married in 1975, and by their sons, Ned and Gabriel, and granddaughters, Violet, Hazel and Hana.