Alvin Hansen
| Alvin Hansen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 23, 1887 Viborg, South Dakota |
| Died | June 6, 1975 (aged 87) Alexandria, Virginia |
| Nationality | Danish-American |
| Institution | Harvard University |
| Field | Macroeconomics, political economics |
| School or tradition |
Neo-Keynesian economics |
| Alma mater |
University of Wisconsin–Madison Yankton College |
| Doctoral advisor |
Richard T. Ely John R. Commons Frederic L. Paxson |
| Doctoral students |
Evsey Domar |
| Influences | John Maynard Keynes |
| Influenced |
John Hicks Paul Samuelson James Tobin Robert Solow |
| Contributions |
IS-LM model (Hicks-Hansen synthesis) Secular stagnation theory |
Alvin Harvey Hansen (August 23, 1887 – June 6, 1975), often referred to as "the American Keynes," was a professor of economics at Harvard, a widely read author on current economic issues, and an influential advisor to the government who helped create the Council of Economic Advisors and the Social Security system. He is best known for introducing Keynesian economics in the United States in the 1930s.
More effectively than anyone else, he explicated, extended, domesticated, and popularized the ideas embodied in Keynes' The General Theory. In 1967, Paul McCracken, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, saluted Hansen: "It is certainly a statement of fact that you have influenced the nation's thinking about economic policy more profoundly than any other economist in this century."
Hansen was born in Viborg, South Dakota on August 23, 1887, the son of Niels Hansen, a farmer, and Marie Bergitta Nielsen. Graduating from the nearby Yankton College in 1910 with a major in English, he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1913 to study economics under Richard Ely and John R. Commons, from whom he learned to use economics to address pressing social problems. Upon completion of the coursework for the PhD in 1916. Hansen married Mabel Lewis: they had two children.
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 Principle of Economics (1928, with Frederic Garver) brought him to the attention of the wider economics profession. His Economic Stabilization in an Unbalanced World (1932), written with the help 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.
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