Ruth Allen (economist)

Ruth Alice Allen
BornJuly 28, 1889[1]
Cameron, Texas, United States
DiedOctober 7, 1979 (aged 90)[1]
Austin, Texas[1]
NationalityAmerican
Academic career
FieldInstitutional economics
InstitutionUniversity of Texas at Austin
Alma materUniversity of Texas at Austin (B.A., M.A.)
University of Chicago ( Ph.D.)
Doctoral
advisor		Harry A. Millis

Ruth Alice Allen (July 28, 1889, Cameron, Texas - October 7, 1979, Austin, Texas) was an American economist and academic who specialized in institutional economics.

Personal life and education

Allen was born on July 28, 1889, in Cameron, Texas,[2] and earned her B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1921 and her M.A. from the same university two years later. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1931.[3] Her doctoral advisor was Harry A. Millis and her dissertation committee included Frank Knight and Paul Douglas.[4]

Career

Allen returned to Texas for the rest of her career, briefly serving as chair of the department of economics (1942–43), but spending most of the next two decades as the department's graduate advisor until her retirement in 1959. After retiring for the first time, she spent six years at Huston–Tillotson College to preserve its accreditation before retiring again in 1968.[4]

Allen's most important works, The Labor of Women in the Production of Cotton,[5] OCLC 1174485, a revision of her 1933 dissertation, and East Texas Lumber Workers (1961), OCLC 234567, were fact-based socioeconomic surveys of those Texas industries through the lens of institutional economics. Allen designed the questionnaires herself and personally conducted most of the interviews.[6]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Barbara K. Byrd (November 1, 1994). "Allen, Ruth Alice". Texas State Historical Association.
  2. ^ William M. Dugger (1989). Radical Institutionalism: Contemporary Voices. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-26595-2.
  3. ^ Kirsten Madden; Robert W Dimand (3 October 2018). Routledge Handbook of the History of Women's Economic Thought. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-52836-4.
  4. ^ a b Dimand, Dimand & Forget, p. 8
  5. ^ Laura Woodworth-Ney (2008). Women in the American West. ABC-CLIO. pp. 216–. ISBN 978-1-59884-050-6.
  6. ^ Dimand, Dimand & Forget, pp. 8–10

References

  • Dimand, Robert W.; Dimand, Mary Ann & Forget, Evelyn L., eds. (2000). A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. ISBN 1852789646.