Hollis B. Chenery

Hollis B. Chenery (1918 – 1994) was an economist well known for his pioneering contribution in the field of development economics. He was born in Richmond, and educated in Virginia , Pelham Manor, and at the universities of Arizona and Oklahoma. He served in the Army Air Corp in World War II. After the war he earned Master degrees from California Institute of Technology and the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from Harvard (awarded 1950).

He worked as a professor of economics at Stanford from 1952 to 1961, as a Guggenheim fellow in 1961 and joined the United States Agency for International Development in 1961, and rose to become an assistant administrator. In 1965 he became a professor of economics at Harvard. He worked as the World Bank's vice president for development policy from 1972 through to 1982. [Page, Eric (1994) September 5th New York Times, Obituary Hollis B. Chenery Dies at 77; Economist for the World Bank]

Chenery’s work was wide ranging but might be summarised as involving the analysis of patterns of development, the use of a two-gap model and multi-sectoral analysis. [Syrquin, M., Taylor, T. and Larry E. Westphal (Eds) (1984) Economic Structure and Performance: Essays in Honor of Hollis B. Chenery, Academic Press]

His major works include
*(1952) Overcapacity and the Acceleration Principle, Econometrica
* with P. Clark (1959) Interindustry Economics
*(1960) Patterns of Industrial Growth, American Economic Review
*(1961) Comparative Advantage and Development Policy, American Economic Review
* with Strout, A. (1966) Foreign Assistance and Economic Development, American Economic Review
* with others (1971) Studies in Development Planning
* with others (1974) Redistibution with Growth: An approach to policy
* with R. Syrquin, (1975) Patterns of Development, 1950-1970
* (1975) A Structuralist Approach to Development Policy, 1975, American Economic Review
* (1979) Structural Change and Development Policy
* (1983) Interaction Between Theory and Observation, World Development. [ [http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/ History of Economic Thought Website ] ]

References