Born in Berlin in 1915, Albert O. Hirschman emigrated to Paris after the rise of Hitler. He studied at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (France), the London School of Economics (U.K.) and the Trieste University (Italy). Shortly afterwards, he took part in the Spanish Civil War; collaborated actively with his brother-inlaw, the socialist, federalist philosopher Eugenio Colorni, and a group of Italian antifascists in Trieste; joined the French Army at the beginning of the World War; helped Varian Fry in Marseilles to rescue European intellectuals and artist in hundreds; and then sailed off to the US. His 1937-1939 papers in the present exhaustive collection were written for private and public purposes (including a meeting of the Société des Nations) and have been mostly unpublished so far. They reflect the gradual blossom and the early professional exploits of one of the greatest economists and social scientists of our time. They encompass a considerable spectrum of themes – demographic statistics; French monetary and budgetary policy; Italian economy; monetary, fiscal and foreign trade policies under Italian fascism and bilateralism in international trade.
The cultural and political European up-bringing of Albert Hirschman, troublesome and non-homogeneous as it was, turned out to be also an asset. His 1937-39 mostly unpublished papers of the present exhaustive collection have a great value in themselves and explaining how he became one of the greatest economists and social scientists of our time.
