Profile Major Works Resources

Ragnar Nurkse,  1907-1959

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Followed up on Rostenstein- Rodan's thesis and anticipated much of the Lewis doctrine in stressing the role of savings and capital-formation in economic development. Early expounder of the "balanced growth" doctrine.

Born and raised in Estonia, then part of the Russian empire, Ragnar Nurske began his education at the University of Dorpat (Tartu) in 1926. But in 1929, Nurske moved to Edinburgh, completing his first degree at the university there in 1932. Nurkse proceeded to Vienna, where he came into the orbit of the Austrian School, particularly Gottfried von Haberler. In 1934, Nurkse moved out of academia and joined the secretariat of the League of Nations in Geneva, working primarily as a researcher. With a few publications already under his belt, Nurkse enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Edinburgh, but never got around to completing it. During World War II, Nurkse emigrated with other League staff to Princeton, in the United States. Nurkse was the primary author of a League study on international currency problems that contributed to the Bretton Woods agreement. After the League was dissolved in 1945, Nurkse was briefly with the IAS in Princeton, then joined the faculty of Columbia in 1947.

It was at Columbia that Nurkse's interests shifted from international money to economic development. Nurske's famous 1953 tract, setting out his balanced growth doctrine, was based on lectures he had given in Rio de Janeiro and Cairo the previous year, and opened the discussion in the budding field. In 1959, Viner lured Nurkse to Princeton, but Nurkse never started. Nurkse died of a heart attack on a hike in the Swiss Alps in May 1959.

 

  


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Major Works of Ragnar Nurkse

  • "The Schematic Representation of the Structure of Production", 1934, RES
  • Conditions of International Monetary Equilibrium, 1945.
  • Problems of Capital-Formation in Underdeveloped Countries, 1953.
  • Patterns of Trade and Development, 1959.
  • Equilibrium and Growth in the World Economy, 1961.

 


HET

 

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Resources on  Ragnar Nurkse

  • "Ragnar Nurkse’s Rule-Based Approach to International Monetary Relations: Complementarities with Chicago" by A.M. Andres and G.A. Fleming,1998 [pdf]
  • "Nurkse and the Role of Finance in Economic Development", by Jan A. Kregel, 2007 [lev]
  • "The Life and Work of Ragnar Nurske" by R. Kattel, J. Kregel and E. Reinert, 2009 [pdf]
  • "The Relevance of Ragnar Nurkse and Classical Development Economics" by R. Kattel, J. Kregel and E. Reinert, 2009 [pdf]
  • Ragnar Nurkse papers at Princeton
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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