Profile Major Works Resources

Leon H. Keyserling, 1908-1987.

American Institutionalist economist-lawyer and New Deal mandarin.

Leon H. Keyserling was educated at Columbia, receiving his B.A. in 1928, obtained a law degree from Harvard in 1931, and returned to study economics at Columbia. Then a prominent Institutionalist stronghold, Keyserling came under the influence of Rexford Tugwell.  While still a graduate student, Keyserling was appointed instructor at Columbia himself. 

After the 1933 ascension of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Keyserling abandoned academia and joined the government as an economic consultant to various New Deal agencies and a legislative assistant to powerful New York senator Robert Wagner.  Keyserling reputedly had a hand in drafting several pieces of notable New Deal legislation.

Leon H. Keyserling was appointed  by President Henry Truman to the first Council of Economic Advisors, from 1946 to 1953.  Keyserling was under the chairman Edwin G. Nourse until 1949, and the two reportedly clashed repeatedly over policy, with Keyserling pushing more expansionist goals and programs than the more conservative Nourse could stomach.  Nourse eventually resigned in late 1949, and Keyserling took over as chairman.

His main economic writings came after this period, when Keyserling was heading non-profit Conference on Economic Progress.

 

  

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Major Works of Leon Keyserling

  • "Federal Finances and the Economy", 1968, AAPSS
  • Prices, Wages and Profits, 1971.
  • Full Employment without Inflation, 1975.
  • Liberal and Conservative National Economic Policies and their Consequences, 1919-1979, 1979.
  • Money, Credit and Interest Rates, 1980.
  • "Towards More Realism and Relevance in National Economic Policy", Atlantic JE

 
HET

 
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Resources on Leon Keyserling

  • Keyserling obituary in NY Times, 1987
  • Leon H. Keyserling papers at Truman Library
  • Designing US Economic Policy: An Analytical Biography of Leon H. Keyserling by W.R. Brazelton, 2001
  • Review of Brazelton's Keyserling at eh.net.
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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