Bronfenbrenner, Martin, 1914-1997

Economist on the faculty at Duke University.

From the description of Martin Bronfenbrenner Papers, 1939-1995 and undated. (Duke University Library). WorldCat record id: 38754551

Martin Bronfenbrenner was born in Pittsburgh in 1914 and died in 1997 in Durham, North Carolina, having just been made a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association. He received his Ph.D. in 1939 from the Universtiy of Chicago and after a brief stint at the U.S. Treasury, enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served in Japan during and after the war, and had a role in the rebuilding of Japan's economy and its relations with the U.S. Taking from his experiences in Japan, Bronfenbrenner published a volume of fictional short stories entitled Tomioka Stories from the Japanese Occupation. From 1947 on, Bronfenbrenner worked exclusively as a university professor. He served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin (1947-1957), Michigan State University (1957-1958), the University of Minnesota (1958-1962), Carnegie Mellon (1962-1971), and Duke University where he held the Kenan Chair from 1971 until 1984. In 1984, he moved to Japan as a professor of international economics at the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan, and in 1991 he returned to Duke University where he taught until his death in 1997. Throughout this period Bronfenbrenner's interests were very wide-ranging and included income distribution theory, labor economics, Marxian and radical economics, development, Japanese economics and history, comparative economic systems, monetary theory and the history of economics. Bronfenbrenner served as vice-president of the American Economic Association (1976-1977), president of the Southern Economic Association (1979-1980), and president of the History of Economics Society (1982-1983).

From the guide to the Martin Bronfenbrenner papers, 1939-1995 and undated, (David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)