16 Facts About Alvin Hansen

1.

Alvin Harvey Hansen was an American economist who taught at the University of Minnesota and was later a chair professor of economics at Harvard University.

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2.

Alvin Hansen is best remembered today for introducing Keynesian economics in the United States in the 1930s and 40s.

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3.

Alvin Hansen helped develop with John Hicks the IS–LM model, a mathematical representation of Keynesian macroeconomic theory.

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4.

Alvin Hansen was born in Viborg, South Dakota on August 23,1887, the son of Niels Alvin Hansen, a farmer, and Marie Bergitta Nielsen.

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5.

Alvin Hansen taught at Brown University while writing his doctoral dissertation, "Cycles of Prosperity and Depression".

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6.

Alvin Hansen was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1932.

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7.

Alvin Hansen was appointment as special economic adviser to Marriner Eccles at the Federal Reserve Board in 1940 and he was in charge until 1945.

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8.

Alvin Hansen died in Alexandria, Virginia on June 6 of 1975 at the age of 87 years.

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9.

Alvin Hansen presented evidence on several occasions before the US Congress to oppose the use of unemployment as the main means of fighting inflation.

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10.

Alvin Hansen advocated instead that inflation could be controlled by changes in interest- and tax-rates as well as controls on prices and wages.

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11.

Alvin Hansen used that analysis to argue for Keynesian deficit spending.

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12.

Alvin Hansen's 1938 book, Full Recovery or Stagnation, was based on Keynesian ideas and was an extended argument that there would be long-term employment stagnation without government demand-side intervention.

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13.

Alvin Hansen argued that the American economy during the Great Depression was not going through a particularly severe business cycle but through the exhaustion of a longer-term progressive dynamic.

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14.

Alvin Hansen trained and arguably influenced numerous students, many of whom later held government posts, and he served on numerous governmental committees dealing with economic issues.

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15.

Alvin Hansen argued that inflation could be managed by timely changes in tax rates and the money supply, and by effective wage and price controls.

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16.

Alvin Hansen advocated fiscal and other stimuli to ward off the stagnation that he thought was endemic to mature, industrialized economies.

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