Alvin Hansen

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Alvin Harvey Hansen (born August 23, 1887 in Viborg (South Dakota) , † June 6, 1975 in Alexandria (Virginia) ) was an American Keynesian economist ( Harvard University ).

Life

Hansen was born in Viborg, South Dakota in 1887 as a child of Danish immigrants. After graduating from Yankton College in 1910, he initially worked as a teacher at a high school for some time until he graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1918 . He taught briefly at Brown University until he was appointed to the University of Minnesota in 1923 .

In 1937 he was offered a position as Lucis N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy at Harvard. Hansen was one of the most important propagators of Keynesian ideas in the USA, which earned him the nickname The American Keynes . Among his students at Harvard were the later Nobel Prize winners Paul Samuelson and James Tobin . His textbook A Guide to Keynes, which explained and supplemented Keynes' General Theory in detail, chapter by chapter, was widely used.

Hansen had a great influence on the economic policy of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman through his membership in numerous advisory bodies of the American governments . He was vice president of the American Statistical Association , and in 1938 Hansen served as president-elect of the American Economic Association .

After his retirement in 1957, he taught at various American universities and at the University of Bombay until his death in 1975 .

Publications

  • Shifting the War Burden (with LH Haney, 1921, The American Economic Review (AER))
  • Cycles of Strikes (1921, AER)
  • Business Cycle Theory (1927)
  • A Fundamental Error in Keynes's Treatise (1932, AER)
  • Economic Stabilization in an Unbalanced World (1932)
  • Mr. Keynes on Underemployment Equilibrium (1936, Journal of Political Economy (JPE))
  • Full Recovery or Stagnation (1938)
  • Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth (1939, AER)
  • Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (1941)
  • Economic Policy and Full Employment (1946)
  • Some Notes on Terborgh's "The Bogey of Economic Maturity" (1946, REStat)
  • Dr. Burns on Keynesian Economics (1947, RES)
  • The General Theory (1947)
  • Keynes on Economic Policy (1947)
  • Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy (1949)
  • The Pigouvian Effect (1951, JPE)
  • A Guide to Keynes (1953)
  • The Dollar and the International Monetary System (1965)

literature

  • Paul A. Samuelson : Alvin Hansen as a Creative Economic Theorist . In: Quarterly Journal of Economics . Vol. 90, February 1976, pp. 24-31 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Past and Present Officers. aeaweb.org ( American Economic Association ), accessed October 31, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Hansen, Alvin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hansen, Alvin Harvey (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Viborg, South Dakota
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1975
Place of death Alexandria (Virginia)