Alvin Hansen

Alvin Harvey Hansen (1887-1975) was professor of Economics at Harvard University, and is best known for introducing Keynesian economics in the United States in the 1930s. In the late 1930s he argued that "secular stagnation" had set in, so that the American economy would never grow again, because all the growth ingredients had played out, including technological innovation. The only solution, he argued, was constant deficit spending by the federal government. The sustained economic growth beginning in 1940 undercut his predictions.

References

Primary sources

• Alvin Hansen, "Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth," American Economic Review (29) March (1939). online at JSTOR.
• Alvin Hansen, Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (1941)

Secondary sources

• Quarterly Journal of Economics vol 90 # 1 (1976) pp 1-37, online at JSTOR and/or in most college libraries.
• "Alvin Hansen on Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth" in Population and Development Review, Vol. 30, 2004

Miller, John E. "From South Dakota Farm to Harvard Seminar: Alvin H. Hansen, America's Prophet of Keynesianism" Historian (2002) 64(3-4): 603-622. Issn: 0018-2370

• Rosenof, Theodore. Economics in the Long Run: New Deal Theorists and Their Legacies, 1933-1993 (1997)