 alexander gerschenkron (; 1 october 1904 â 26 october 1978) was a russian-born american jewish economic historian and professor at harvard university, trained in the austrian school of economics. born in odessa, then part of the russian empire, gerschenkron fled the country during the russian civil war in 1920 to austria, where he attended the university of vienna, earning a doctorate in 1928. after the anschluss in 1938, he emigrated to the united states. ==research== gerschenkron kept to his rootsâin his economics, history and as a critic of russian literature. his early work concentrated on development in the soviet union and eastern europe. in a celebrated 1947 article, he found the gerschenkron effect (changing the base year for an index determines the growth rate of the index). his early work often pursued the statistical tricks of soviet planners. gerschenkron also advanced the linear stages theory of economic development which posits that economic development goes forward in fairly determined stages. however, he did accept that different periods exhibit different types of development: for instance, with the coexistence of advanced and backward countries, that the latter could skip several stages which the former had already gone through, by adopting their more advanced or productive technology. this was illustrated by the peculiar paths of industrialization of meiji japan and the soviet union. gerschenkron postulated that the more "backward" an economy was at the outset of development the more certain conditions were likely to occur during growth: consumption would be squeezed in favor of investment (i.e., savings) in countries starting from farther behind, and there was likely to be a greater reliance on banks, state entities, and other means of directing investment, among o
1904_births 1978_deaths American_economists American_people_of_Russian-Jewish_descent Austrian_School_economists Development_economists Economic_historians Guggenheim_Fellows Harvard_University_faculty