Volume 39, Number 9 · May 14, 1992
His Secret Life
By Robert L. Heilbroner
Opening Doors: The Life and Work of Joseph Schumpeter Vol. 1: Europe Vol. 2: America
by Robert Loring Allen
Transaction Publishers, Vol. 2, 348 pp., $69.95 the set
Schumpeter: A Biography
by Richard Swedberg
Princeton University Press, 293 pp., $24.95
My serious studies in economics did not begin until the fall of 1939, my last year at Harvard, when I took a course with Alvin Hansen in which we wrestled with the problem of understanding the incomprehensible Depression that had been devastating the economy for almost a decade. From time to time various professors came to our class and told us why the Depression would go away as soon as one or another problem was removed, usually irresponsible trade union or government policy. From Hansen himself we learned of another view of the Depression, put forward only three years earlier by John Maynard Keynes—a view that envisioned the Depression as an instance of 'unemployment equilibrium,' from which there was no rescue except the deliberate use of government spending to supplement the expenditure of the private sector.
Review, 4271 words
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