Alexander Gerschenkron

Alexander Gerschenkron was a Harvard economic historian trained in the Austrian school.

Born in Russia, he kept to his Russian roots - in his economics, history and as a critic of Russian literature. His early work concentrated on development in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. In a celebrated 1947 article, he found the Gerschenkron effect (changing the base year for an index determines the growth rate of the index). His early work, often pursued the statistical tricks of Soviet planners.

Gerschenkron also advanced the linear stages theory of economic development which posits that economic development goes forward in fairly determined stages. However, he did accept that different periods exhibit different types of development: for instance, with the coexistence of advanced and backward countries, that latter could skip several stages which the former had to go through by adopting their advanced technology. This was illustrated by the peculiar paths of industrialization of Meiji Japan and Soviet Russia.

Despite his roots in the Austrian school he criticized the "penny pinching, 'not-one-heller-more-policies'," of the prominent Austrian economist Eugene von Böhm-Bawerk when Austrian chancellor and lays much of the blame for Austria's economic backwardness on Böhm-Bawerk's unwillingness to spend heavily on public works projects.