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Max Millikan

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Max Franklin Millikan (December 12, 1913 - December 14, 1969) was an American economist, Professor of Economics at MIT, Assistant Director of the Office of Research and Reports at the CIA, and director of the MIT Center for International Studies.[1]

Biography

Millikan was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He stated his studies at the California Institute of Technology from 1931 to 1933, and then moved to Yale University, where he obtained his BS in Physics in 1935. In the year 1935-36 he was student at Cambridge University. Back at Yale in 1941 he obtained his Ph.D. in Economics.[2]

In 1938 Millikan had started his academic career as Instructor in Economics at Yale University. In 1941 he was appointed Assistant Professor, and in 1942 Research Associate. In 1942 he joined the US Office of Price Administration as Senior Business Specialist, and the War Shipping Administration as Principal Economist, where he as Assistant Director of the Division of Ship Requirements from 1944 to 1946. In 1946 he joined the United States Department of State as Chief Economist in the Intelligence Bureau Division, Research for Europe. In 1947 he served in the President's Commission on Foreign Aid as Assistant Executive Secretary, and was consultant to the United States House of Representatives.[2]

In 1949 he returned to the academic world to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), where he was appointed Associate Professor. In the year 1951-52 he took a year Leave to serve as Assistant Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Upon his he return at MIT he was appointed Professor of Economics, where he served until his death in 1969. From 1952 to 1969 he was also Director of the MIT Center for International Studies, from 1956 to 1969 he was President of the World Peace Foundation.[2]

Work

US foreign aid for development

In 1954 Walt Whitman Rostow advised President Dwight Eisenhower on economic and foreign policy, and in 1958 he became a speechwriter for him. In August 1954, Rostow and Millikan convinced Eisenhower to massively increase US foreign aid for development as part of a policy of spreading American-style capitalist economic growth in Asia and elsewhere, backed by the military.[3][4]

National economic planning, 1967

In the introduction to the 1967 publication, entitled National Economic Planning, edited by Millikan, Millikan gave a perspective on the conception on national economic planning in the first part of the 20th century. He explained:

"Fashions among economists are almost as fickle as among dress designers. It would have been inconceivable for a conference volume with this title [ National Economic Planning ] to have appeared thirty-five years ago. Twenty-five years ago it would have been assumed that it was a volume about economic policy in the Soviet Union, which was the only country then regarded as having a "planned economy." Fifteen years ago the assumption would have been that it was a book about the planned development of the so-called underdeveloped countries, where the idea of national economic planning was beginning to gain wide popularity as a necessary and even sometimes sufficient condition for economic growth. Within the last ten years the term has become so popular and has been applied to so many different kinds of activities that it could now refer to almost any kind of economic analysis or policy thinking in almost any country in the world. Whereas before World War II the term economic planning frequently carried, for many people in both professional and popular discourse, unfavorable connotations of centralization and autocratic control..."[5]

According to Millikan in those days national Economic Planning as by then "widely regarded as a good thing which should be practiced in one form or another by all governments."[5]

Selected publications

  • Rostow, Walt Whitman, Alfred Levin, and Max F. Millikan. The dynamics of Soviet society. Vol. 1. New American Library, 1954.
  • Millikan, Max F., and Walt Whitman Rostow. A proposal: Key to an effective foreign policy. Harper & Bros., 1957.
  • Millikan, Max F., and Donald LM Blackmer. The emerging nations: their growth and United States policy. Boston: Little, Brown (1961).
  • Malenbaum, Wilfred, and Max F. Millikan. Prospects for Indian development. Allen & Unwin, 1962.
Article, a selection
  • Millikan, Max F. "Introduction to" National Economic Planning". National Economic Planning. NBER, 1967. 3-11.
  • Gardner, Richard N., and Max F. Millikan. "The global partnership. International agencies and economic development." The global partnership. International agencies and economic development. (1968).

References

  1. ^ Millikan, Max Franklin, 1913-1969 at socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu. Accessed 30-03-2017.
  2. ^ a b c Guide to the Max Millikan Personal Papers (#163), at jfklibrary.org. Accessed 30-03-2017.
  3. ^ http://www.american.edu/spa/ccps/upload/Tama-Eisenhower-paper.pdf http://www.american.edu/spa/ccps/upload/Tama-Eisenhower-paper.pdf
  4. ^ http://www.cia-on-campus.org/mit.edu/max.html http://www.cia-on-campus.org/mit.edu/max.html
  5. ^ a b Millikan (1967;3)
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