Interview with Alan R. Sweezy

An interview in two sessions in February-March 1982 with Alan R. Sweezy, professor of economics in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Professor Sweezy joined Caltech's humanities faculty in 1949, after having taught for several years at Williams College. He did his undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard. During the Depression, before joining the faculty at Williams, he worked in Washington helping to set up the new Social Security System, and later at the Federal Reserve Board. His interests in economic development led him to studies of population growth, and in the late 1960s he became active in Planned Parenthood, becoming national chairman in 1972. Along with Professor Harrison Brown, Sweezy was instrumental in launching Caltech's Population Program in 1970, sponsored by the Agency for International Development (AID). The program worked closely with the American Universities Field Staff to collect and analyze data on population growth and population policy in underdeveloped countries, and several influential conferences were held at Caltech in the early 1970s on these issues. In this interview, Sweezy recalls the genesis of the program and its demise in 1974, which he attributes largely to a change of focus in the humanities division. By then the division had shifted to a narrower and more mathematically oriented brand of social sciences; macroeconomics, with its larger studies of population, resource utilization, fiscal policy, etc., gave way to microeconomics. He also comments on the wide interests of his colleagues on the faculty and on the changes in the student body over the years

Economic Meaning of a Labor Shortage

Keynes pointed out that in a laissez-faire economy geared to a high level of investment spending, population growth, via its effect on investment, might be an important factor in maintaining prosperity. He also showed, however, that fiscal and monetary policy could be used to counteract fluctuations in private investment and thus maintain a generally high level of income and employment whatever might be happening to population growth

Obstacles to Population Control

Davis' article "Population policy: Will current programs succeed?" (10 Nov., p. 730) is excellent and I can only elaborate on one point. He wrote: "Support and encouragement of research on population policy other than family planning is negligible. It is precisely this blocking of alternative thinking and experimentation that makes the emphasis on family planning a major obstacle to population control." This statement minimizes the problem

La revolución keynesiana y sus pioneros: los keynesianos y la política del gobierno 1933-1939

En este artículo el autor, sobre la base de un análisis de las principales contribuciones económicas de la década del 30, destaca los elementos de Keynesianismo implícitos en los primeros aportes de Currie y en general del grupo de "cerebros jóvenes" que asesoraron a Roosevelt para la formulación de las políticas del New Deal. Sobre la base de una revisión de los principales debates de la década del 30 muestra que, fue al calor de estos debates, que luego serían acallados por la Segunda Guerra Mundial, como se despejó el camino para laaplicación de políticas monetarias y fiscales 'razonables' y para su conversion en pieza fundamental del bagaje institucional del Gobierno.Cuadernos de Economía, 13(18-19), Bogotá, 1993