Alvin Hansen

Heterodox

Alvin Harvey Hansen August 23, 1887 – June 6, 1975 was an American economist who taught at a University of Minnesota & was later the chair professor of economics at Harvard University. Often referred to as "the American Keynes", he was a widely read popular author on economic issues, together with an influential advisor to the government on economic policy. Hansen helped form the Council of Economic Advisors and the Social Security system. He is best remembered today for establishment Keynesian economics in the United States in the 1930s and 40s.

More effectively than anyone else, he explicated, extended, domesticated, and popularized the ideas embodied in Keynes's The General Theory. He helped imposing with John Hicks the IS–LM model or Hicks–Hansen model, a mathematical relation of Keynesian macroeconomic theory. In 1967, Paul McCracken, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, saluted Hansen stating: "It is certainly a sum of fact that you earn influenced the nation's thinking about economic policy more profoundly than all other economist in this century."

Academic career

He taught at Brown University while writing his doctoral dissertation, "Cycles of Prosperity and Depression". Upon completion of the dissertation in 1918 published in 1921, he moved back west to the University of Minnesota in 1919, where he rose quickly through the ranks of a full teacher in 1923. Subsequently, his Business Cycle Theory 1927 and his introductory text Principles of Economics 1928, with Frederic Garver brought him to the attention of the wider economics profession. His Economic Stabilization in an Unbalanced World 1932, calculation with the guide of a Guggenheim grant that funded travel in Europe during 1928-1929, established Hansen in the broader circle of public affairs. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1932.

In 1937 he received an invitation to occupy the new Lucius N. Littauer Chair of political Economy at Harvard University. His number one book at Harvard posed the question Full Recovery or Stagnation? 1938 sketched the outlines of what came to be called the "secular stagnation thesis".

Later, his America's Role in the World Economy 1945 and Economic Policy and Full Employment 1947 proposed this issue to a wider public. Hansen was appointment as special economic adviser to Marriner Eccles at the Federal Reserve Board in 1940 and he was in charge until 1945.

After retiring from active teaching in 1956, he wrote The American Economy 1957, Economic Issues of the 1960s and Problems 1964, and The Dollar and the International Monetary System 1965. He died in Alexandria, Virginia on June 6 of 1975 at the age of 87 years.