Economist G. L. S. Shackle claimed the importance of Gunnar Myrdal's analysis by which saving and investment are allowed to adjust ex ante to each other. However, the reference to ex ante and ex post analysis has become so usual in modern macroeconomics that the position of Keynes to not include it in his work was currently considered as an oddity, if not a mistake. As Shackle put it:

Gunnar Myrdal also developed the key concept circular cumulative causation, a multi-causal approach where the core variables and their linkages are delineated.

Academic career

thumb|right|Myrdal (left) examines dwelling models with [[United States Housing Authority|U.S. Housing Administrator Nathan Straus Jr., 1938]]

Gunnar Myrdal became professor at Stockholms Högskola 1933. Myrdal was professor of economics at Stockholms Högskola for 15 years, until 1947.

He became a Social Democratic Member of Parliament from 1933, and again from 1945 to 1947 he served as Minister of Commerce and Industry in Tage Erlander's government. During this period, he was heavily criticized for his financial agreement with the Soviet Union. At the same time he was accused of being responsible for the Swedish monetary crisis in 1947.

He coauthored with his wife, Alva Myrdal, the Crisis in the Population Question (, 1934). The work of Gunnar and Alva inspired policies adopted by the Minister of Social Affairs, Gustav Möller, to provide social support to families.

Gunnar Myrdal headed a comprehensive study of sociological, economic, anthropological and legal data on race relations in the United States funded by the Carnegie Corporation, starting in 1938. The result of the effort was Gunnar Myrdal's best-known work, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, published in 1944, written with the collaboration of R. M. E. Sterner and Arnold Rose. He characterized the problem of race relations as a dilemma because of a perceived conflict between high ideals, embodied in what he called the "American Creed," on the one hand and poor performance on the other. In the generations since the Civil War, the U.S. had been unable to put its human rights ideals into practice for the African American tenth of its population. This book was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. Myrdal planned on doing a similar study on gender inequality, but he could not find funding for this project and never completed it.

World War II and after

During World War II, Gunnar Myrdal was staunchly and publicly anti-Nazi. Together with his wife, Alva, he wrote Contact with America in 1941, which praised the United States' democratic institutions.

Gunnar Myrdal became the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in 1947. During his tenure, he founded one of the leading centers of economic research and policy development. After ten years in the position, Dr. Myrdal resigned as Executive Secretary in 1957. In 1956 and 1957, he was able to publish An International Economy, Problems and Prospects, Rich Lands and Poor and Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions. Myrdal was also a signatory of the 1950 UNESCO statement The Race Question, which rebuts the theories of racial supremacy and purity, and also influenced the Brown v. Board of Education decision. "What he knew about [United States] constitutional law we are not told nor have we been able to learn." In 1956, Myrdal wrote the foreword for African American author Richard Wright's The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference.

Between 1960 and 1967, he was a professor of international economics at Stockholm University. In 1961, he founded the Institute for International Economic Studies at the university. Throughout the 1960s, he worked on a comprehensive study of trends and policies in South Asia for the Twentieth Century Fund. The study culminated in his three-volume Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, published in 1968. In 1970, he published a companion book called The Challenge of World Poverty, where he laid out what he believed to be the chief policy solutions to the problems he outlined in Asian Drama.

Gunnar Myrdal strongly opposed the Vietnam War. In Asian Drama, Myrdal predicted that land reform and pacification would fail in Vietnam and urged the United States to begin negotiations with North Vietnam. After returning to Sweden, he headed the Swedish Vietnam Committee and became co-chair of International Commission of Inquiry Into U.S. War Crimes in Indochina. He also presided over the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an international watchdog for the arms trade. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

thumb|upright|Myrdal in 1980

In 1967 Myrdal received an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University. but argued for its abolition because he believed that economics is a "soft" science.

During 1974–1975, he served as visiting professor at NYU.

Myrdal received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1979.

Personal life

thumb|upright|Alva and Gunnar Myrdal circa 1980

Myrdal married politician and diplomat Alva Myrdal in 1924, and together had son Jan Myrdal (born 1927), daughter Sissela Bok (born 1934) and daughter Kaj Fölster (born 1936). Through Fölster, he is the grandfather of Swedish economist Stefan Fölster.

Alva Myrdal was a prominent leader of the disarmament movement. She, along with Alfonso García Robles, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.

Myrdal suffered from Parkinson's disease and was hospitalized for two months before he died in a hospital in Trångsund, south of Stockholm, on 17 May 1987. His daughter Kaj Fölster and his grandson, Janken Myrdal, were present.

Contributions to the philosophy of knowledge

Gunnar Myrdal's scientific influence was not limited to economics. Through the introduction to Asian Drama with the title "The Beam in our Eyes" (a biblical reference; cf. Matthew 7:1–2) he introduced the approach mentioned as scientific relativism of values. This behavioral approach is narrowly connected to behavioralism and is built on the idea that the logical gulf between "is" and "ought" is more sophisticated than just dividing premises into categories. The articles edited in "Value in Social Theory" underlines Myrdal's importance to political science. As political science normally is considered more descriptive than economics, one might get the idea that Myrdal should not have dealt systematically with the values applied to economics. On the contrary, Myrdal connected social science, political science and economics as a practitioner.

Myrdal published many notable works, both before and after American Dilemma and, among many other contributions to social and public policy, founded and chaired the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Internationally revered as a father-figure of social policy, he contributed to social democratic thinking throughout the world, in collaboration with friends and colleagues in the political and academic arenas. Sweden and Britain were among the pioneers of a welfare state and books by Myrdal (Beyond the Welfare State – New Haven, 1958) and Richard Titmuss (Essays on "The Welfare State" – London, 1958) unsurprisingly explore similar themes. Myrdal's theoretical key concept "circular cumulative causation" contributed to the development of modern Non-equilibrium economics.

Welfare world

Myrdal suggested that we need to evolve from the welfare state to the welfare world, which would enable the redistribution of income and wealth not only within a country but also on a global scale. During the Cold War era, In Beyond the Welfare State, he proposed the idea of the welfare world to overcome the limitations of the welfare state in the West. Myrdal's recommendations were not accepted by international technocrats or by developing countries.

  • Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1974)
  • Bronislaw Malinowski Award (1975)

Honorary degrees

  • Harvard University (1938)
  • Fisk University (1947)
  • The New School for Social Research (1956)
  • Yale University, Doctor of Laws (1959)
  • University of Birmingham (1961)
  • Howard University, Legume Doctor (1962)
  • Detroit (1963)
  • Stockholm University, Doctor of Philosophy (31 May 1966)
  • Sir George Williams University, Doctor of Laws (May 1967)
  • University of Michigan, Doctor of Laws (1967)
  • Lehigh University (1967)
  • University of Louisville, Doctor of Social Science (November 1968)
  • University of Oslo (1968)
  • Gustavus Adolphus College, Doctor of Humane Letters (1971)
  • Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies (1970)
  • Visva-Bharati University (1982)
  • An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Harper & Bros, 1944.
  • Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem. Phylon, Vol. 9, No. 3, 3rd Quarter, 1948.
  • Conference of the British Sociological Association, 1953. II Opening Address: The Relation between Social Theory and Social Policy The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 3, Sept. 1953.
  • An International Economy, Problems and Prospects. Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1956.
  • Rich Lands and Poor. 1957.
  • Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, Gerald Duckworth, 1957.
  • Value in Social Theory: A Selection of Essays on Methodology. Ed. Paul Streeten, published by Harper, 1958.
  • Challenge to Affluence. Random House, 1963.
  • America and Vietnam – Transition, No. 3, Oct, 1967.
  • Twenty Years of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. International Organization, Vol 22, No. 3, Summer, 1968.
  • Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, 1968.
  • Objectivity in Social Research, 1969.
  • The Challenge of World Poverty: A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline. 1970.
  • Against the Stream.
  • Hur Styrs Landet?, 1982.
  • Gunnar Myrdal on Population Policy in the Underdeveloped World – Population and Development Review, Vol 13, No. 3, Sept. 1987.
  • The Equality Issue in World Development – The American Economic Review, vol 79, no 6, Dec 1989.

References

  • Video Gunnar Myrdal lecturing at UCLA 5/4/1966
  • The Selected Works by Gunnar Myrdal are available for research use at the Gustavus Adolphus College and Lutheran Church Archives.
  • A Methodolological Issue: Ex-Ante and Ex-Post, Claude Gnos
  • Gunnar Myrdal, growth processes and equilibrium theory
  • On Prices in Myrdal's Monetary Theory-Alexander Tobon
  • including the Prize Lecture on March 17, 1975 The Equality Issue in World Development
  • IDEAS/RePEc
  • Gunnar Myrdal's Prescient Criticisms of Keynes' General Theory-by Philip Pilkington
  • Rules from Myrdal's Monetary Equilibrium Adrián de León-Arias
  • Monetary Equilibrium – Claes Henrik Siver Stockholm University
  • Myrdal's Analysis of Monetary Equilibrium G.L.S. Shackle
  • Gunnar Myrdal at Svenskt biografiskt lexikon