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Albert Hirschman

Albert Otto Hirschman
Dostlertrial.jpg
Hirschman (left) translates accused German Anton Dostler in Italy 1945
Born (1915-04-07)April 7, 1915
Berlin, German Empire
Died December 10, 2012(2012-12-10) (aged 97)
Ewing Township, New Jersey, United States
Institutions
Field Political economy
Alma mater University of Trieste
Contributions Hiding hand principle
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Albert Otto Hirschman (born Otto-Albert Hirschmann; April 7, 1915 – December 10, 2012) was an influential economist and the author of several books on political economy and political ideology. His first major contribution was in the area of development economics. Here he emphasized the need for unbalanced growth. Because developing countries are short of decision making skills, he argued that disequilibria should be encouraged to stimulate growth and help mobilize resources. Key to this was encouraging industries with a large number of linkages to other firms.

His later work was in political economy and there he advanced two simple but intellectually powerful schemata. The first describes the three basic possible responses to decline in firms or polities: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. The second describes the basic arguments made by conservatives: perversity, futility and jeopardy, in The Rhetoric of Reaction.

In World War II, he played a key role in rescuing refugees in occupied France.

Otto Albert Hirschmann was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Carl and Hedwig Marcuse Hirschmann, and brother of Ursula Hirschmann. After he had started studying in 1932 at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, he was educated at the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics and the University of Trieste, from which he received his doctorate in economics in 1938.

Soon thereafter, Hirschman volunteered to fight on behalf of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. After France surrendered to the Nazis, he worked with Varian Fry to help many of Europe's leading artists and intellectuals to escape to the United States; Hirschman helped to lead them from occupied France to Spain through paths in the Pyrenees Mountains and then to Portugal.


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