Building a Reputation at Minnesota

At the end of the 1920s, Hansen and his Minnesota colleagues were working on research projects including the “Northwest Regional Survey” and “The Consumer and Changes in Methods of Distribution of Consumer Goods.” In 1928, Garver and Hansen published their Principles of Economics lecture materials as a textbook, trying to maintain a balance between an analytical framework and descriptive data. One informed the other in interpreting contemporary issues. This was neither a contribution to theory nor policy. However, with the boom and bust of the late 1920s, that was to change radically, propelling Minnesota and Hansen to national prominence. In February 1931, the university formed The Employment Stabilization Research Institute to survey and study the problems of unemployment in Minnesota. This led to a proposal for an Unemployment Reserve scheme which would contribute to the later debates over social security. A Guggenheim Fellowship allowed Hansen to spend a year in Europe that informed his next major work Economic Stabilization in an Unbalanced World (1932). Hansen’s pre-Keynesian work reached its zenith in the early 1930s before being shaken by the developments of that decade.