Profile Major Works Resources

Irma Adelman, 1930-2017. 

Portrait of I. Adelman (from Blaug)


Irma Adelman was born in Czernwotz, Romania, to a Jewish family. The family moved to British Palestine in 1939, subsequently Israel after 1948, where Irma would complete her school education. She emigrated to the United States to enroll at the University of California Berkeley, where she would obtain her BA in 1950 an eventually her Ph.D in 1955, with a thesis on Walras's monetary theory.

As a woman, Irma Adelman had difficulties securing a permanent position, and would hold a series on temporary appointments at Berkeley and Stanford. During this time, she published several seminal works, .e.g. on the Klein-Goldberger model confirming the shock-based cycle hypothesis of Frisch (1959), computation of indexes using hedonic pricing (with Griliches, 1959) and her theoretical book on economic growth (1961).   In 1962, Adelman obtained a permanent position at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.   It was during this period that she began her work in economic development, and was a frequent consultant used by the the USAID in Washington DC.  She served as an important consultant for the South Korean government's development plane from 1965.

It was during her period there that Adelman initiated her long collaboration with Cythia Taft Morris, and began her work on large scale econometric models, bringing factor analysis into economics. 

Adelman moved to Chicago in 1966 to take up a position at Northwestern.  It was here that Adelman initiated her long collaboration with Cynthia Taft Morris, and began her work on large scale econometric models, bringing factor analysis into economics.  She also went on to pioneer the construction of computational general equilibrium models.  However, her work as a development economists drove her back to Washington, initially at the World Bank in 1971, then at the University of Maryland from 1972.  

Adelman returned to her alma mater, UC Berkeley, in 1979, initially at the Department of Agricultural Economics.  She remains at Berkeley to this day.

 

  

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Major Works of Irma Adelman

  • "A New Approach to the Construction of Index Numbers", 1956, REStat
  • "Money in a Static Economy", 1959, WWA.
  • "A Stochastic Analysis of the Size Distribution of Firms", 1959, JASA.
  • "Dynamic Properties of the Klein-Goldberger Model", with F.L. Adelman, 1959, Economica
  • "A Note on changes in industry structure", with L. Preston, 1960, REStat.
  • "Business Cycles - Endogenous or Stochastic?", 1960, EJ
  • Theories of Economic Growth and Development, 1961.
  • "On an Index of Quality Change", with Zvi Griliches, 1961, JASA
  • "An Econometric Analysis of Population Growth", 1963, AER
  • "Long Cycles - Fact or Artefact?", 1965, AER.
  • "A Factor Analysis of the Interrelationship between Social and Political Variables and Per Capita GNP", with Cynthia Taft Morris, 1965, QJE
  • "Foreign Aid and Economic Development: The case of Greece", with H.B.Chenery, 1966, REStat
  • The Theory and Design of Economic Development, with E. Thorbecke, 1966.
  • Society, Politics and Economic Development: a quantitative approach, with C.T. Morris, 1967.
  • "Analysis of Variance Techniques for the Study of Economic Development", with C.T. Morris, 1971, J Dev Stud
  • Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing Countries, with C.T. Morris, 1973.
  • "The Measurement of Institutional Characteristics of Nations: methodological considerations", with C.T. Morris, 1973, J Dev Stud
  • "On the State of Development Economics", 1974, J Dev E
  • "Strategies for Equitable Growth", 1974, Challenge
  • "Development Economics: a reassessment of goals", 1975, AER.
  • "Growth, Income Distribution and Equity-Oriented Development Strategies", 1975, World Development
  • "Policies for Equitable Growth", with C.T. Morris, and S. Robinson, 1976, World Development
  • Income Distribution Policy in Developing Countries: A case- study of Korea, with Sherman Robinson, 1978.
  • "Growth and Impoverishment in the Middle of the 19th Century", with C.T. Morris, 1978, World Development
  • Redistribution Before Growth: A strategy for developing countries.  1978.
  • "Beyond Export-Led Growth", 1984, World Development
  • "A Poverty-Focused Approach to Development Policy", 1986, in Lewis, editor, Development Strategies Reconsidered
  • "Macroeconomic adjustment and income distribution: alternative models applied to two economies", with S. Robinson, 1988,  J Dev Ec
  • "Confessions of an Incurable Romantic", 1988, BNLQR.[psl]
  • Comparative Patterns of Economic Development, 1850-1914, 1988
  • "Social Development in Korea", 1999 [wp]
  • The Genesis of the Current Global Economic System, 1999 [wp]
  • Development History and its Implications for Development Theory: An Editorial with C.T. Morris, 1999 [wp]

 
HET

 
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Resources on Irma Adelman

 

 
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