Arthur Frank Burns (born April 27, 1904 in Stanyslaviv, Galicia (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine); died June 6, 1987 in Baltimore) was an American economist. Burns and his family emigrated to the United States in 1914, and he earned his B.A. and Ph.D (1934) from Columbia University, studying under Wesley Clair Mitchell. His career alternated between academia and government. He taught at Columbia and studied business cycles while president of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also was the chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors from 1953 to 1956 under Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency. He served as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970–1978 and as ambassador to West Germany from 1981–1985. April 27 is the 117th day of the year (118th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 248 days remaining. ... 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukrainian: ; before 1962 Станиславів, Stanyslaviv; Polish: StanisÅ‚awów; Russian: ; German: Stanislau (before World War I); Yiddish: סטאַניסלעוו, Stanislev) is a city in Ukraine. ... Coat-of-arms of Galicia Galicia is a historical region currently split between Poland and Ukraine. ... June 6 is the 157th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (158th in leap years), with 208 days remaining. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Flag Seal Nickname: Monument City, Charm City, Mob Town, B-more Motto: Get In On It (formerly The City That Reads and The Greatest City in America; BELIEVE is not the official motto but rather a specific campaign) Location Location of Baltimore in Maryland Coordinates , Government Country State County United... An economist is an individual who studies, develops, and applies theories and concepts from economics, and writes about economic policy. ... 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... Columbia University is a private university whose main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ... Wesley Clair Mitchell (August 5, 1874 – October 29, 1948) was an American economist known for his empirical work on business cycles and for guiding the National Bureau of Economic Research in its first decades. ... The business cycle or economic cycle refers to the ups and downs seen somewhat simultaneously in most parts of an economy. ... The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics, especially the American economy. ... The Council of Economic Advisers is a group of economists set up to advise the President of the United States. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1953 calendar). ... 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Dwight David Ike Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American soldier and politician. ... The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve is the head of the central bank of the United States and one of the more important decision-makers in American economic policies. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The academic part of Burns's career focused on the measurement of business cycles, including questions such as the duration of economic expansions, and what economic variables rise during expansions and fall during recessions. He often collaborated with Wesley Clair Mitchell and set the academic tradition continued by the NBER's business cycle dating committee, which is generally considered authoritative in dating recessions. Burns's detailed macroeconomic analysis influenced Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's classic work A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. An abstract business cycle The business cycle or economic cycle refers to the ups and downs seen somewhat simultaneously in most parts of an economy. ... A recession is usually defined in macroeconomics as a fall of a countrys Gross National Product in two successive quarters. ... Wesley Clair Mitchell (August 5, 1874 – October 29, 1948) was an American economist known for his empirical work on business cycles and for guiding the National Bureau of Economic Research in its first decades. ... Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy in terms of the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the general behavior of prices. ... Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912) is an American economist, known for his work on macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history, statistics, and for his advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. ... Anna Schwartz is an economist who has changed our understanding of how the world works. ...

Appointed by Richard Nixon as chairman of the Fed, Burns held one of the most powerful jobs in the country. He presided over a turbulent economy, including a sustained increase in the inflation rate. The consumer price index rose over 72% during his tenure. Negative economic events included multiple oil shocks and heavy government deficits arising in part from the Vietnam War and Great Society government programs. Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. ... --71. ... An Energy Crisis is any great shortfall (or price rise) in the supply of energy to an economy. ... A budget deficit occurs when an entity (often a government) spends more money than it takes in. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines Democratic Republic of Vietnam National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength ~1,200,000 (1968) ~520,000 (1968) Casualties South Vietnamese dead... The Great Society was a set of domestic programs proposed or enacted in the United States on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969). ...

Burns has a reputation of having been overly influenced by political pressure in his monetary policy decisions^[1] and for supporting the policy, widely accepted in political and economic circles at the time, that Fed action should try to maintain an umemployment rate of around 4 percent.^[2]

When Vice President Richard Nixon was running for President in 1959-1960, the Fed was undertaking a monetary tightening policy that resulted in a recession in April 1960. In his book Six Crises, Nixon later blamed his defeat in 1960 in part on Fed policy. In 1970, Nixon named Burns to the Fed Chairmanship with instructions to ensure easy access to credit when Nixon was running for reelection in 1972.^[1] When Burns resisted, negative press about him was planted in newspapers and, under the threat of legislation to dilute the Fed's influence, Burns and other Governors succumbed.^[3][4] Inflation resulted, which Nixon attempted to manage through wage and price controls while the Fed under Burns maintained an expansive monetary policy. After the 1972 election, price controls began to fail and by 1974, the inflation rate was 12.3 percent.^[1] The Vice President of the United States is the second-highest executive official of the United States government. ... Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. ... The presidential seal was used by President Hayes in 1880 and last modified in 1959 by adding the 50th star for Hawaii. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... For other uses, see April (disambiguation). ... Presidential electoral votes by state. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... In economics, incomes policies are wage and price controls used to fight inflation. ... Monetary policy is the government or central bank process of managing money supply to achieve specific goals—such as constraining inflation, maintaining an exchange rate, achieving full employment or economic growth. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...

Another factor contributing to inflation under the Burns Fed was the belief among Burns and other Fed Governors that "the country" was not willing to accept rates of unemployment in the range of six percent as a means of quelling inflation. From the Board of Governors meeting minutes of November 1970, Burns believed that: An 1837 political cartoon about unemployment in the United States. ...

...prospects were dim for any easing of the cost-push inflation generated by union demands. However, the Federal Reserve could not do anything about those influences except to impose monetary restraint, and he did not believe the country was willing to accept for any long period an unemployment rate in the area of 6 percent. Therefore, he believed that the Federal Reserve should not take on the responsibility for attempting to accomplish by itself, under its existing powers, a reduction in the rate of inflation to, say, 2 percent... he did not believe that the Federal Reserve should be expected to cope with inflation single-handedly. The only effective answer, in his opinion, lay in some form of incomes policy.^[2]

In economics, incomes policies are wage and price controls used to fight inflation. ...

Sources

• Engelbourg, Saul. "The Council of Economic Advisers and the Recession of 1953-1954." Business History Review 1980 54(2): 192-214. Issn: 0007-6805 Fulltext in Jstor. Abstract: The 1953-54 recession was the first in which a Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) appointed by a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, recommended policy actions. Despite traditional Republican Party rhetoric, the CEA supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish Keynesianism as a bipartisan economic policy for the nation. Especially important in formulating the CEA response to the recession - accelerating public works programs, easing credit, and reducing taxes - were Arthur F. Burns and Neil H. Jacoby.
• Leeson, Robert. "The Political Economy of the Inflation-unemployment Trade-off." History of Political Economy 1997 29(1): 117-156. Issn: 0018-2702 Fulltext in Swetswise and Ebsco. Abstract: Reviews the debate over the inflation-unemployment trade-off, which was a critical part of the 1960 presidential election campaign. At the 1959 American Economic Association Conference (AEAC), Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argued that the application of American wage and price statistical data to the Phillips curve indicated high levels of employment could be achieved with moderate levels of inflation. While this proposition supported John F. Kennedy's goal of minimizing unemployment, Richard Nixon advocated zero inflation and was supported in this policy by Arthur Burns, who delivered the 1959 AEAC presidential address. Burns was an opponent of Keynesian economics and personified the anti-Keynesian sentiment that prevailed in the United States in the 1950's. Keynesianism and communism were seen by many at the time to be one and the same.
• Robert Sobel The Worldly Economists(1980).
• Throckmorton, H. Bruce. "The Moral Suasion of Arthur F. Burns: 1970-1977." Essays in Economic and Business History 1991 9: 111-121. ISSN: 0896-226X. Abstract: Reviews key words in Arthur F. Burns's testimony on various occasions before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress while he served as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1970-78. Correlates the key words with rates of inflation and interest rates to determine if there is a relationship between key words of testimony and selected economic variables.
• Wells, Wyatt C. Economist in an Uncertain World: Arthur F. Burns and the Federal Reserve, 1970-78. Columbia U. Press, 1994. 334 pp.

Robert Sobel in a promotional photo for his publisher. ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

Primary sources

• Burns, Arthur F. Reflections of an Economic Policy Maker: Speeches and Congressional Statements: 1969-1978 (AEI Studies no. 217; Washington: American Enterprise Inst., 1978); reviewed by Paul W. McCracken, "Reflections of an Economic Policy Maker: a Review Article" in Journal of Economic Literature 1980 18(2): 579-585. Issn: 0022-0515 Fulltext online at Jstor and Ebsco.
• Burns, Arthur F. "Progress Towards Economic Stability." American Economic Review 1960 50(1): 1-19. Issn: 0002-8282 Fulltext in Jstor and Ebsco. Abstract: Views economic growth, 1929-59; discusses corporate growth, government subsidies, increased consumer expenditures, rise in personal income, industrialization, and overall improvement in economic organization.

Notes

1. ^ ^a b c Bartlett, Bruce, "(More) Politics at the Fed?," www.nationalreview.com, April 28, 2004
2. ^ ^a b Hetzel, Robert L., "Arthur Burns and Inflation," Economic Quarterly, The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Volume 84/1, Winter 1998, pages 21-44
3. ^ Safire, William, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House, Transaction Publishers, 2005
4. ^ Greider, William, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, Simon & Schuster, 1989

Chairmen of the Federal Reserve
Hamlin • Harding • Crissinger • Young • Meyer • Black • Eccles • McCabe • Martin • Burns • Miller • Volcker • Greenspan • Bernanke