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Bergson, Abram (1914–2003)

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Abstract

Bergson was the intellectual father of US studies of the Soviet economy during the Second World War as chief of the Russian Economic subdivision of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After the war he played the major role in founding the US tradition of description and analysis of Soviet economic institutions, measurement of Soviet economic growth and evaluation of that growth. He had earlier made a major contribution to the development of welfare economics. His work on the Soviet economy was marked by a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge of Soviet statistics, theoretical analysis and immense industry. It had an enormous influence on the development of US studies of the Soviet economy and established itself as the dominant paradigm in that field.

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Ellman, M. (2018). Bergson, Abram (1914–2003). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_253

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