TRANSITION ECONOMICS IN GUNNAR MYRDAL’S PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

A Review of James Angresano, The Political Economy of Myrdal, An Institutional Basis for the Transformation Problem. Cheltenham--Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1997. Angresano's purpose in the book under review is to examine the relevance of Myrdal's intellectual legacy to the pressing and unsolved problems of transition in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries. Myrdal won the 1974 Nobel prize in economics even though he was not a typical mainstream economist. Myrdal was born in 1898 in the village of Solvarbo, in the Central Swedish province of Dalarna. Even today this province reflects old Sweden in miniature; farms, woods and lakes still predominate. In summer Swedes still flock there to savor the pleasures of village life as it has been lived in Dalarna for centuries. The rural folk remain freeholders of their land whose history knew little of either nobility or serfdom. Myrdal's father, Carl Adolf Pettersson (1876-1934) was himself the owner of a landed estate, a successful, self-made man of conservative political leanings. His child was christened Karl Gunnar. The childhood memoirs of Gunnar's son, Jan Myrdal (1991), recall how Karl Pettersson became Myrdal. After graduation from the gymnasium, as a student of jurisprudence, he called himself Myrdahl. Eventually, the letter h also disappeared from the last name and the young student became Myrdal. At the University of Stockholm, he studied with Knut Wicksell, David Davidson, Eli F. Heckscher and Gustav Cassel. He was a brash young man and Gustav Cassel once warned him by saying: Gunnar you should be more respectful to your elders, because it is we who will determine your promotion. Yes, young Myrdal replied, but it is we who will write your obituaries. Nevertheless, he and Cassell became very close and he eventually succeeded to the latter's chair in political economy at Stockholm University. When Cassel died in 1945, Myrdal wrote his obituary which was eventually translated in 1963, into English. In 1924, married Alva Reimer, who became a leading feminist as well as a diplomat and cabinet member and, in 1982, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Myrdals had three children: Jan, an essayist and political scientist, Sissela Ann, an authority on ethics and the wife of Derek C. Bok, former president of Harvard University, and Kaj Forster, a sociologist, who resides in Gottingen, West Germany. Jan, their oldest son, caused much grief by publishing childhood memories of his parents that portrayed them as popularity seekers, opportunists, and bleeding heart liberals. Jan Myrdal did not attend either of their funerals. But whatever Jan Myrdal wrote about his parents, and Alva got along splendidly and were a happy couple indeed. Myrdal held the Lars Hierta professorship in Economics and Finance at the University of Stockholm from 1934 to 1950. In 1960, he became Professor of International Economy at the University of Stockholm, a post he held until his retirement in 1967. Myrdal was a prolific writer and his bibliography, published in 1976, listed 1051 citations. His best-known books are An American Dilemma (1944), Asian Drama, 3 volumes (1968), The Challenge of World Poverty. A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline (1970), Against the Stream: Critical Essays on Economics (1973), The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory (1953; originally published in Swedish in 1930) and The Monetary Equilibrium (1939; originally published in Swedish in 1931). The post-Soviet governments of Eastern Europe and Russia turned to Washington, London, Bonn and Paris for advice on transforming their societal structures. Their subsequent policies were heavily influenced by advice from World Bank and International Monetary Fund specialists who were all mathematically trained mainstream economists. These advisers were only partially successful: Poland has taken off into sustained growth, while Russia remains in a state of economic retrogression. …