Gardiner Coit Means (June 8, 1896 – February 15, 1988) was an American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

who worked at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, where he met lawyer-diplomat

Adolf A. Berle Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (; January 29, 1895 – February 17, 1971) was an American lawyer, educator, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of ''The Modern Corporation and Private Property'', a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, a prof ...

. Together they wrote the seminal work of

corporate governance Corporate governance refers to the mechanisms, processes, practices, and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated by their boards of directors, managers, shareholders, and stakeholders. Definitions "Corporate governance" may ...

, ''

The Modern Corporation and Private Property ''The Modern Corporation and Private Property'' is a book written by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means published in 1932 regarding the foundations of United States corporate law. It explores the evolution of big business through a legal and econo ...

''. During the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

, Means served as an economic adviser to

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

and

Henry A. Wallace Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was the 33rd vice president of the United States, serving from 1941 to 1945, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He served as the 11th U.S. secretary of agriculture and the 10th U.S ...

Academic work

Means followed the institutionalist tradition of economists. In 1934 he coined the term "administered prices" to refer to prices set by firms themselves, as contrasted with market prices, set for commodities like corn and oil in impersonal markets. In ''The Corporate Revolution in America'' (1962) he wrote:

"We now have single corporate enterprises employing hundreds of thousands of workers, having hundreds of thousands of stockholders, using billions of dollars' worth of the instruments of production, serving millions of customers, and controlled by a single management group. These are great collectives of enterprise, and a system composed of them might well be called "collective capitalism."

Means argued that where an economy is fueled by big firms it is the interests of

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

, not the

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

, that govern

society A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. ...

Bibliography

* ''

'' with

(1932) * ''"Industrial Prices and their Relative Inflexibility"'' (1935) * ''Patterns of Resource Use'' (1938) * ''The Structure of the American Economy'' (1939) * ''Pricing Power and the Public Interest'' (1962) * ''The Corporate Revolution in America'' (1962) * ''"Simultaneous Inflation and Unemployment: Challenge to theory and policy"'' (1975) * * ''A Monetary Theory of Employment'' 1994.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Means, Gardiner 20th-century American economists 1896 births 1988 deaths Harvard University faculty Harvard University alumni

Academic work

Bibliography

See also

References

External links