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This paper introduces a hitherto unpublished 1970 paper written by Lauchlin Currie (1902–1993) on Paul Rosenstein Rodan’s famous 1943 paper on the “Big Push” which led to the balanced-unbalanced growth debate to which Albert Hirschman (1915–2012) was an important contributor. Both Currie and Hirschman had been key economic advisers to the Colombian government, and their respective views on development planning are contrasted. In particular, it is shown how Currie’s 1970 paper illuminates the theory behind the 1971–1974 national plan for Colombia that he prepared and helped deliver; and how the related institutional innovations have had an enduring impact on Colombia’s recent economic history.

Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students. They include Bertil Ohlin, Nicholas Kaldor, James Angell, Lauchlin Currie, Colin Clark, Howard Ellis, Frank Fetter, Earl Hamilton, and Melvin Knight (brother of Frank Knight who, with Edward Chamberlin, was perhaps Young’s most famous PhD student). There has recently been a revival of interest in Young’s influence on US monetary thought and in his theory of economic growth based on endogenous increasing returns. These recollections of his students (addressed to Young’s biographer, Charles Blitch) shed light on why Young has, at least until recently, been renowned more for his massive erudition than for his published writings.

Introduces the special issue to mark the 10th anniversary of Lauchlin Currie's death. Currie was an economist described as the intellectual leader of the spending wing of Roosevelt's New Deal.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

The author, Lauchlin Currie, suggests, in a memorandum written in February 1937, that there should be banking legislation with reference to foreign capital inflows. Gives a series of suggestions as to what might be needed.

Presents the monthly estimates of the Federal Government in the USA from 1932‐1937. States that in 1937 the contribution has declined below the levels of the other recent years, reflecting in part a decrease in expenditures but more largely an increase in tax receipts. Investigates how the contribution was measured and its significance. Examines the significance of the 1937 decline in contribution and proposes that there may be a decrement to buying power in the first half of 1938.

Presents a memorandum written by Lauchlin Currie in December 1940 to the President of the USA on the subject of expansion possibilities of the US monetary system.

Henry George's fame in the fields of economics, politics and literature rests largely on his powerful book, Progress and Poverty, first published in 1879. The centenary of this event sparked a modest revival of interest in George's work among academic economists, including a special session devoted to him at the December 1979 American Economics Association meetings in Atlanta. Generally, however, his work has been neglected by twentieth‐century economists and, as Robert Heilbroner (1969) remarked, he is cast as a member of the economics “underworld”. If any economics undergraduate has heard his name it is usually through a passing reference in a first‐year textbook to the Single Tax Movement. The impression is then given by the text that George was a single‐issue fanatic. The student is told that a tax on land rents is theoretically interesting and that it would have no disincentive effects but that it is either impractical to separate land from improvements or that rents are not sufficiently important to warrant much attention to them as a major source of government finance.

Presents memorandum in the form of a list of Lauchin Currie's ideas on changes to the Federal Reserve System that he thought were necessary.

Presents a letter written by Lauchlin Currie in 1934 to the then President of the USA Roosevelt, praising his monetary policy and also offering advice.