Paul Howard Douglas

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Paul Howard Douglas

Paul Howard Douglas (born March 26, 1892 in Salem , Massachusetts, † September 24, 1976 in Washington DC ) was a university professor, economist and influential US Senator ( Democratic Party ).

Life

Douglas was married to Emily Taft Douglas (second marriage), graduated from Bowdoin College (BA) in 1913 , and from Columbia University in New York (MA) in 1915 and studied economics at Harvard University (PhD) in 1915/1916 . As an economist, economist, author and university professor, he taught at the University of Illinois from 1916 to 1917, and from 1917 to 1918 at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. From 1918 to 1919 he worked for the " Emergency Fleet Corporation ". 1919–1920 he took up a teaching position at the University of Washington ; from 1920 to 1949 he was a professor at the University of Chicago . In 1947 he also served as president-elect of the American Economic Association .

Douglas was a very successful economist at the University of Chicago who published a new book every two years. He met the legendary Jane Addams of Hull House, who influenced his later struggles against corruption and for social reform. Between 1930 and 1939 served on numerous state and national commissions and committees, and from 1939 to 1942 as a city councilor in the Chicago City Council.

His first application for a seat in the US Senate in 1942 was unsuccessful. From 1948 he was elected for three terms until 1966 for 18 years for the Democratic Party from the state of Illinois in the US Senate. He was chairman of numerous committees there, including the Joint Committee on the Economic Report and the Joint Economic Committee . He was also chairman of the President's Committee on Urban Affairs from 1967 to 1968. In 1950 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1952 to the American Philosophical Society .

In the early 1970s he retired from public life after a stroke and died on September 24, 1976 in Washington. His ashes were scattered in the woods of Jackson Park in Chicago.

research

Douglas has written numerous articles for academic journals and magazines including The American Economic Review , The New Republic , The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times .

In 1928 Paul Douglas, along with Charles Wiggins Cobb, achieved ultimate fame. The two showed statistically a special form of the production function suggested by Johann Heinrich von Thünen and developed by Knut Wicksell in 1913. The function is therefore known in neoclassical economics as the Cobb-Douglas function .

Books

  • The Worker in Modern Economic Society (1923),
  • Wages and the Family (1925),
  • Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926 (1930),
  • The Problem of Unemployment (1931),
  • The Making of a New Party (1932),
  • Standards of Unemployment Insurance (1933),
  • The Theory of Wages (1934),
  • Controlling Depressions (1935),
  • Social Security in the United States (1936),
  • Ethics in Government (1952),
  • Economy in the National Government (1952),
  • In Our Time (1967),
  • In the Fullness of Time (1971). Autobiography

swell

  • Jerry M. Anderson: Paul H. Douglas: Insurgent Senate Spokesman for Humane Causes, 1949-1963. Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1964.
  • Roger Biles: Crusading Liberal, Paul H. Douglas of Illinois . 2002.
  • Paul H. Douglas: In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas . Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1972.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Past and Present Officers. aeaweb.org ( American Economic Association ), accessed October 31, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Douglas, Paul Howard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Salem , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1976
Place of death Washington DC