Allyn Abbott Young (1876-1929)

The Biographical Dictionary of American Economists covers American and Canadian economists and writers/thinkers with views on economics from the pre-Revolutionary period to the 1950s. All the major schools of American economic thought are represented, ranging from the Constitutional school to the Keynesian and the Chicago School. A significant number of the subjects are female, including figures such as Anna Schwartz, Mabel Timlin, Mabel Newcomer, Margaret Gilpin Reid, Rose Friedman and Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, highlighting the role that women have played in the development of American economic thought. More generally, the dictionary includes many minor but important figures who have contributed to that development; this chapter focuses on the work of Allyn Abbott Young. His best-known single paper was his presidential address to the British Association in September 1928 on "Increasing returns and economic progress"

Lauchlin Currie (1902-1993)

Biography of the economist Lauchlin Currie. At Harvard in the early 1930s Currie pioneered a monetary diagnosis of the 1929-32 collapse and placed blame on the Federal Reserve Board. As a prominent New Dealer at the Fed during 1934-9 he urged contra-cyclical monetary and fiscal activism. During 1939-45 he worked in Washington as President Roosevelt's economic adviser. After heading a World Bank mission to Colombia in 1949 he spent 40 years advising on national development there. He emphasized urban housing as a leading sector, based on an innovative housing finance system, and extended Allyn Young's ideas on macroeconomic increasing returns and endogenous growth

Politics and the attack on FDR's economists : from the grand alliance to the Cold War

US government economists in the later years of the administration of Franklin Roosevelt were urged to treat the Soviet Union as an ally, in the interests of winning World War II and establishing the basis for peaceful cooperation after the war. The onset of the Cold War and the subsequent rise of McCarthyism sullied the reputations of many of them, especially the two most prominent: Lauchlin Currie (chief economist in the White House) and Harry Dexter White (chief economist in the Treasury). Close examination of the parallels between these two seemingly disparate cases reveals that recent attempts to revive the charges are no more firmly based than those of the early 1950s

Harvard, the Chicago tradition, and the quantity theory : a reply to James Ahiakpor

James Ahiakpor's critique of our 2002 work on the relationship between a certain 1932 Harvard memorandum on antidepression policies and the 1932 Harris Foundation manifesto dealing with the same issues misses the significance of these documents, and of the relationships between them, both for the literature of the time, and for later debates about the origins of 1930s Chicago ideas about monetary economics. He is correct to locate these documents in a more general quantity theoretic tradition, but his discussion here is marred by a serious misunderstanding of the so-called forced saving doctrine and its place in that tradition. Finally, Ahiakpor fails to appreciate that the absence of positive policy proposals from the 1934 Harvard studies of The Economics of the Recovery Program, a point that he himself notes, is a major contributing factor to that book's mediocrity

Three variants of endogenous growth : as applied to the United Kingdom, 1948-2000

Paper focusing on the three variants of endogenous growth as applied to the United Kingdom from 1948-2000. The new growth theory, which took off with Romer (1986, 1987) and Lucas (1988) reemphasises the role of saving and capital accumulation in growth. In this theory technical change is made endogenous9 by making the production function yield increasing returns to scale rather than the neoclassical constant returns to scale. The result is that the contribution of inputs such as capital to growth is greater than in the conventional neoclassical models. Further, the ability of firms to devote more resources to new research10 is linked to some form of market power. In this context the role of such factors as patents, monopolistic competition and protectionism in making possible increased resources for new research are emphasised

Allyn Abbott Young on macroeconomic increasing returns

Endogenous growth theory is now fashionable. It seeks to explain why per capita income growth in capital abundant countries is often faster than in capital poor countries and defies the operation of diminishing returns. This theory, which took off with Romer and Lucas, often makes Allyn Young's concept of increasing returns and Marshall's distinction between internal and external economies its starting point but considers their treatment of the subject as not sufficiently rigorous. The modern endogenous growth theorists then claim to explain what they had in mind with greater clarity, rigour and depth. This paper argues that this is not the case as these theorists actually misrepresent Young in important ways

Lauchlin Currie (1902-93)

Biography of the economist Lauchlin Currie. At Harvard in the early 1930s Currie pioneered a monetary diagnosis of the 1929-32 collapse and placed blame on the Federal Reserve Board. As a prominent New Dealer at the Fed during 1934-9 he urged contra-cyclical monetary and fiscal activism. During 1939-45 he worked in Washington as President Roosevelt's economic adviser. After heading a World Bank mission to Colombia in 1949 he spent 40 years advising on national development there. He emphasized urban housing as a leading sector, based on an innovative housing finance system, and extended Allyn Young's ideas on macroeconomic increasing returns and endogenous growth

The Lauchlin Currie papers at Duke University: a review of their significance for the history of political economy

Presentation on the Lauchlin Currie papers at Duke University: including a review of their significance for the history of political economy

Does investment cause growth? a test of an endogenous demand-driven theory of growth applied to India 1950-96

This chapter investigates whether investment cause growth presenting a test of an endogenous demand-driven theory of growth applied to India from 1950-96