Ragnar Nurkse

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Ragnar Nurkse (born September 22 . Jul / 5. October  1907 greg. In Käru today county Rapla , Estonia , † 6. May 1959 in Vevey , Switzerland ) was an Estonian , later in the USA living economist .

Life

Ragnar Nurkse's parents were Wilhelm Nurkse (1883-1933) and Victoria Clanman-Nurkse (1882-1964). He attended the German-speaking cathedral school in Reval (today: Tallinn ) and studied economics in Tartu , Edinburgh and Vienna .

From 1934 Nurkse worked in the finance and economic department of the League of Nations in Geneva . As a deputy delegate of the economic department of the League of Nations, he took part in the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in July 1944 in Bretton Woods , NH / USA. From 1945 he taught at Columbia University in New York City . His work in New York was interrupted by a sabbatical year at Oxford and trips to lectures and conferences in several countries. In 1958 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Nurkse held a research professorship in Geneva in 1958/59 and should have continued his academic career afterwards at Princeton University as director of the department for international finance. However, he unexpectedly died of heart failure on a walk to Mont Pèlerin on Lake Geneva ; he was buried in Vevey .

Ragnar Nurkse was married to Harriet Berger (1916–1978). The marriage resulted in two sons, Peter Nurkse and the poet Dennis Nurkse (* 1949).

Services

Ragnar Nurkse was one of the fathers of the system of fixed exchange rates ( Bretton Woods system , 1944 to 1971) and one of the founders of development economics .

Fonts

Nurkses work can be divided into three phases: (1) in the 1930s work on international capital movements, (2) then up to the 1940s work on international trade and cross-border financial flows, (3) from the mid-1940s to on his death in 1959, work on overcoming structural economic problems in developing countries.

The three creative periods of Nurkses are characterized by three main works:

  • the monograph "International Capital Movements" from 1935 - a work that the economist Gottfried Haberler later described as "pre-Keynesian" ( Keynes ' General Theory appeared a year later)
  • the work published by the League of Nations on questions of the international monetary and financial system, of which Nurkse can be identified as the main author - in particular the paper "International Currency Experience: Lessons of the Inter-War Period" from 1944. Nurke's recommendation was that the world economically destabilizing currency speculation of the To overcome the interwar period by fixing exchange rates . This view, which was shared by many economists of his time, was a pillar of the world economic order of the post-war period, the Bretton Woods system , for almost three decades , which was only dissolved in 1971 with the decoupling of the US dollar from gold.
  • the text "Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries" from 1953, which emerged as a summary of various essays and lectures - a standard work of "classic" development economics (1950s to 1970s). Here Nurkse developed the concept of the vicious circle of poverty, the cause of economic backwardness, as well as the concepts of big push industrialization and balanced growth as blueprints for overcoming structural poverty in developing countries.

Honors

The Estonian Post issued a special postage stamp in 2007 in honor of Nurkse's centenary.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kalev and Kalle Kukk: Life and Time of Ragnar Nurkse , in: Rainer Kattel, Jan A. Kregel and Erik S. Reinert, Ragnar Nurkse (1907-2007). Classical Development Economics and its Relevance for Today , Anthem Press, London, New York, Delhi 2009, pp. 29-52.
  2. ^ Hans-Heinrich Bass : Ragnar Nurkse's development theory: Influences and perceptions , in: Rainer Kattel, Jan A. Kregel and Erik S. Reinert, Ragnar Nurkse (1907-2007). Classical Development Economics and its Relevance for Today , Anthem Press, London, New York, Delhi 2009, pp. 183-202.
  3. ^ Gottfried Haberler: Introduction , in Gottfried Haberler and Robert M. Stern (Eds.), Equilibrium and Growth in the World Economy. Economic Essays by Ragnar Nurkse , Cambridge / Mass., 1962.
  4. ↑ Hans-Heinrich Bass : Development Theory. Who is who? - Ragnar Nurkse (1907-1959): Balanced Growth and the Role of Capital Formation in the Development Process , in: Development Policy, Information North-South 2–3 / 2007, pp. 58–60.
personal data
SURNAME Nurkse, Ragnar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian economist
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Käru , Rapla County, Estonia
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1959
Place of death Vevey , Switzerland