James Duesenberry

Who was James Duesenberry?

James Stemble Duesenberry was an American economist. He made a significant contribution to the Keynesian analysis of income and employment with his 1949 doctoral thesis Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior. Kenneth Arrow believed that it offered "one of the most significant contributions of the postwar period to our understanding of economic behavior". His theory, however, later disappeared from standard textbooks, although it outperforms the alternative theories that displaced it in the 1950s.

Duesenberry attended the University of Michigan, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1939, his Master of Arts in 1941, and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948. He served as professor of economics at Harvard University from 1955–1989.