Gunnar Myrdal

Gunnar Myrdal (December 6, 1898 – May 17, 1987) was a Swedish economist and politician. He was born in Gagnef, Dalecarlia, and died in Danderyd, close to Stockholm. He married Alva Myrdal in 1924, and they had three children including Jan Myrdal. In 1982, Alva Myrdal won the Nobel Peace Prize.

He was professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics from 1933 to 1947 and simultaneously a Social Democratic senator. He became minister of trade from 1945 to 1947. For the next 10 years he was executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe after which Asia and third world poverty commanded his attention for a while. Between 1960 and 1967 he was professor of international economics at Stockholm University. He shared the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (otherwise known as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics) with Friedrich Hayek in 1974.

Myrdal is perhaps even more famous for his influential and landmark book "An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy", originally published in 1944 and commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation, and for coining the phrase "An American Dilemma." The dilemma is between high ideals on the one hand and poor performance on the other: in the two generations or more since the Civil War, the U.S. had not been able to put its human rights ideals into practice for the black (or Negro) tenth of its population. This comprehensive study of sociological (including economics), anthropological and legal data on black-white race relations in the U.S. was begun in 1938, after Myrdal was selected by the Carnegie corporation to direct the study. It should be noted here that Myrdal planned on doing a similar study on the question of gender instead of race; however, he could not find the funding for this project so he never completed it.

Myrdal published many other notable works, both before and after this most notable work and, among many other contributions to social and public policy, founded and chaired the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Internationally revered as a father-figure of social policy, he contributed to social democratic thinking throughout the world, in collaboration with friends and colleagues in the political and academic arenas. Sweden and Britain were among the pioneers of a welfare state and books by Myrdal (Beyond the Welfare State - New Haven, 1958) and Richard Titmuss (Essays on “The Welfare State” - London, 1958) unsurprisingly explore similar themes.

Publications

The Equality Issue in World Development - The American Economic Review, vol 79, no 6, Dec 1989
Fiscal Policy in the Business Cycle - The American Economic Review, vol 21, no 1, Mar 1939
America and Vietnam – Transition, No. 3, Oct, 1967
Gunnar Myrdal on Population Policy in the Underdeveloped World – Population and Development Review, Vol 13, No. 3, Sept. 1987
Twenty Years of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe – International Organization, Vol 22, No. 3, Summer, 1968
Conference of the British Sociological Association, 1953. II Opening Address: The Relation between Social Theory and Social Policy The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 3, Sept, 1953
Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem – Phylon, Vol. 9, No. 3, 3rd Quarter, 1948
Value in Social Theory: A Selection of Essays on Methodology Edited by Paul Streeten, published by Harper 1958
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy Published by Harper & Bros, 1944
Population, a Problem for Democracy The Godkin Lectures, Published by Harvard University Press, 1940
Crisis in the Population Question – 1934
The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory

(Note: The Royal Library of Sweden has a complete bibliography in Swedish.)

External links

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