John Kenneth Galbraith

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Galbraith was the leading economist of the twentieth century. John S. Gambs described him as, “six feet eight inches high, an economist, satirist, litterateur, politician, scholar, publicist, aesthete, diplomat, wit, charmer, reformer, attractive nuisance and so on” (15). This towering personality was born in 1908 at Iona Station in southern Ontario. He graduated in 1931 in agricultural economics from Ontario Agricultural College (Stanfield 1) and did his Ph.D. in agricultural economics at the University of California and joined United States Department of Agriculture. In 1936, Galbraith joined Harvard University but shifted to Cambridge University, in 1937 to take up research fellowship. Meanwhile in 1937, Galbraith married Catherine Merriam Atwater who was an American author. After completing the fellowship from Cambridge University, Galbraith returned to Harvard (Interviews with Galbraith xix). In 1941, Galbraith joined office of Price Administration as deputy administrator. This job made him the most powerful economist in United States. His experience in this position led him to give the theory of price control. His love for writing made him join fortune magazine as an editor in 1943. In 1945, he was inducted as director of the U.S. Strategic bombing Survey and was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1947, he co-founded the ‘Americans for Democratic Action’. In 1948, he rejoined Harvard as professor of Economics Emeritus. In 1952, he published ‘A Theory of Price Control’ and ‘The Great Crash, 1929’ in 1954. But the trilogy which made him world famous was created in 1952 with publication of American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power followed by The Affluent Society in 1958, which won him the ‘Tamiment Book Award’ and ‘Sidney Hillman Award’. This was followed by The New Industrial State in 1967. Meanwhile,

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