BRONFENBRENNER, MARTIN

BRONFENBRENNER, MARTIN (1914–1997), U.S. economist. Bronfenbrenner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1939. He taught for some time before going into government service, first with the Treasury (1940–41) and then with the Federal Reserve System. In 1947 he returned to teaching, at Wisconsin(1947–57), Michigan State (1957–58), and Minnesota (1958–62) Universities. In 1962 he joined the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and in 1966 became chairman of the economics department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He then taught at Duke University in North Carolina, where he held the Kenen Chair from 1971 until 1984. Bronfenbrenner moved to Japan in 1984 as a professor of international economics at the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. He returned to Duke University in 1991, where he taught until his death. He served as vice president of the American Economic Association (1976–77), president of the Southern Economic Association (1979–80), and president of the History of Economics Society (1982–83). In 1997 he was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. Bronfenbrenner's main interests were the economics of the Far East, particularly of Japan and Korea. His books include Lessons of Japanese Economic Development (1961), Survey of Inflation Theory (1963), Academic Encounter: The American University in Japan and Korea (1963), Is the Business Cycle Obsolete? (1970), Income Distribution Theory (1971), Macroeconomic Alternatives (1979), Economics (1987), Macroeconomics (1987), and Microeconomics (1990). (Joachim O. Ronall / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)