0000000001104385
AUTHOR
M Alacevich
ALBERT O. HIRSCHMAN AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE, 1946–1952
This essay introduces the work conducted by Albert O. Hirschman at the Federal Reserva Bank. His main areas of interest, on which he produce original research, were European postwar reconstruction and integration; country studies (Italy and France, particularly), alternative modes of economic development; the role of the US in assisting reconstruction and development.
Harvard meets the crisis: U.S. fiscal policy in the 1930s and the political economy of Lauchlin B. Currie, Jacob Viner, John H. Williams and Harry D. White
The paper aims to describe the contribution of four Harvard economists to the interpretation of the Great Depression and the policy decision making from 1933 to 1938. Lauchlin B. Currie, Jacob Viner, John H. Williams, Harry D. White, eminent scholars in the field of monetary and international economics, were deeply involved in policy decisions during the New Deal. In our synoptic analysis we will benefit from extensive scholarly work that has been provided in the last few years. We shall examine the extensive biographical connection between Currie, Viner, White and Williams with special regard to their common training at Harvard. Then we shall compare their interpretations of the causes of …
The 1947 Meat Shortage and Modigliani’s Meat Plan: The Shaping of Public Economic Discourse in Postwar America
This paper aims to assess Modigliani’s contribution to the American post war debate over price controls and economic stabilization. We will focus on his unpublished “Plan for meeting the domestic meat shortage without price control and rationing”. Elaborated by Modigliani in the Summer of 1947 the plan was designed to cope with meat shortage arising from crop failures aggravated by the implementation of the European Recovery Program. It was based on a system of taxes and subsidies aiming to realize a proper distribution of disposable income and to warrant a minimum meat consumption without encroaching market mechanisms and consumers’ freedom. In the paper we will describe the contents of th…
The postwar economic order. National reconstruction and international cooperation
Albert O. Hirschman wrote the reports collected in this book while in the employ of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Almost all of them appeared in the Review of Foreign Developments, which ran from 1945 to 1975. The reports, which were usually marked “Confidential” or “Restricted,” are now in the public domain but remain the intellectual creations of Hirschman.*