Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Fellner, William, 1905-1983
- Abstract:
- Correspondence, speeches and writings, conference papers, reports, studies, testimony, charts, and statistics related to economic conditions and governmental economic policy in the United States, and laissez-faire economic theory, including particularly questions of unemployment, inflation, and monetary policy.
- Extent:
- 67 manuscript boxes, 1 card file box, 2 phonotape cassettes (27.3 Linear Feet)
- Language:
- The collection is in English
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], William John Fellner papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The papers document the career of economist William John Fellner through correspondence, speeches and writings, conference papers, reports, studies, testimony, charts, and statistics related to economic conditions and governmental economic policy in the United States, and laissez-faire economic theory, including questions of unemployment, inflation, and monetary policy.
Feller immigrated to the United States in 1938, joining the economics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a professor at Yale University from 1952 to 1973, after which he became a member of the Council of Economic Advisors. The Biographical file includes material from Fellner's memorial service, as well as his Festschrift.
The Correspondence contains Fellner's letters to and from economists, including scholars associated with the American Enterprise Institute, such as Phillip Cagan and Gottfried Haberler. These files often contain preliminary drafts of scholarly papers sent as enclosures.
Fellner wrote about a variety of topics in economics, including inflation, full employment, balance of payments, oligopoly, and tax indexing. The Speeches and writings include typescripts of Fellner's last published book, Towards a Reconstruction of Macroeconomics, as well as typescripts and proofs of his scholarly articles.
Fellner was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he directed the Contemporary Economic Problems project to publish annual volumes on topics in economics. The American Enterprise Institute file includes correspondence and papers submitted to the Contemporary Economic Problems project, as well as a transcript of a presentation given by Friedrich August von Hayek in 1975.
After retiring from his professorial work, Fellner was involved in several economics organizations and boards. The Subject file contains correspondence, memoranda, and conference papers related to groups such as the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity, the Congressional Budget Office, the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Gold Commission.
A significant portion of the collection contains Writings by others, mainly in the form of conference papers or preliminary drafts send to Fellner by other economists.
The collection includes Sound recordings of the Public Policy Forums program. In a recording from 1977, Henry Aaron and Rudolph Penner discuss ways to avoid bankruptcy of the Social Security program. A recording from 1982 contains an economic policy discussion with Phillip Cagan, William Fellner, Rudolph Penner, and Herbert Stein.
Source: Connell, Carol M. Reforming the World Monetary System: Fritz Machlup and the Bellagio Group. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Date Event 1905 Born, Budapest, Hungary1929 Ph.D. in economics, University of Berlin1929-1938 Partner in family business in Hungarian manufacturing industry1939-1952 Member of economics faculty at University of California, Berkeley1942 Author, A Treatise on War Inflation1946 Author, Monetary Policies and Full Employment1949 Author, Competition Among the Few: Oligopoly and Similar Market Structures1952-1973 Professor of economics, Yale University1956 Author, Trends and Cycles in Economic Activity: An Introduction to Problems of Economic Growth1956-1958 Member, Executive Committee, American Economic Association1960 Author, Emergence and Content of Modern Economic Analysis1965 Author, Probability and Profit: A Study of Economic Behavior Along Bayesian Lines1969 President, American Economic Association1970-1983 Adviser, Brookings Panel on Economic Activity1972 Author, with Phillip Cagan, Economic Policies and Inflation in the Sixties1973 Author, with Phillip Cagan and Marten Estey, A New Look at Inflation: Economic Policy in the Early 1970s1973-1975 Member, Council of Economic Advisors1973-1983 Resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute1976 Author, Towards a Reconstruction of Macroeconomics1983 Died - Acquisition information:
- Acquired by the Hoover Institution Library Archives in 1987.
- Physical location:
- Hoover Institution Library & Archives
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Box 69 may not be used without permission of the Archivist. The remainder of the collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
- Terms of access:
-
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], William John Fellner papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
- Location of this collection:
-
Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305-6003, US
- Contact:
- (650) 723-3563