Gardner Ackley
United States Ambassador to Italy
In office April 3, 1968 – August 27, 1969
President	Lyndon Johnson Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Fred Reinhardt
Succeeded by	Graham Martin
6th Chair of theCouncil of Economic Advisers
In office November 16, 1964 – February 15, 1968
President	Lyndon Johnson
Preceded by	Walter Heller
Succeeded by	Art Okun
Personal details
Born	(1915-06-30)June 30, 1915 Indianapolis,Indiana, U.S.
Died	February 12, 1998(1998-02-12) (aged 82) Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	Western Michigan University(BA) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor(MA,PhD)

Hugh Gardner Ackley (June 30, 1915 – February 12, 1998) was an Americaneconomist anddiplomat.

Ackley served as a member of theCouncil of Economic Advisers under PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, and as the chairman under PresidentLyndon B. Johnson from 1964 to 1968. He also served as ambassador to Italy from 1968 to 1969.^[1] Ackley was a member of theUniversity of Michigan faculty for 43 years and served as chair of its economics department. Upon returning to the university following his ambassadorship, he was named the Henry Carter Adams Professor of Political Economy. In 1982 he served as president of theAmerican Economic Association.^[2]

Ackley was born inIndianapolis, Indiana in 1915, and was raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he attended public schools and graduated fromWestern Michigan University in 1936. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1940, and joined the faculty that year. He served in the U.S.Office of Price Administration and theOffice of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., from 1941 to 1946 and as assistant director of the U.S. Office of Price Stabilization from 1951 to 1952.^[3][4]

Ackley believed that government had a definite role in fine tuning the economy, using both fiscal and monetary intervention. He warned President Johnson in 1966 that a tax increase was needed to finance the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the increased social welfare spending that Johnson was undertaking. Johnson did not ask for a tax increase, and economists, includingPaul Samuelson, believed this was the cause of the inflation of the 1970s.^[2]

Ackley was the author of the popular graduate-level textbookMacroeconomic Theory, which was translated into several languages and remained the standard advanced text during the 1960s and early 1970s.^[4][5] He was awarded a fellowship from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and another fellowship from theFord Foundation.^[6] He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1972.^[7]

Ackley has a dormitory hall at Western Michigan University named after him.^[8]

• "Relative Prices and Aggregate Consumer Demand", with D.B. Suits, 1950,American Economic Review.
• "The Wealth-Saving Relationship",Journal of Political Economy, 1951.
• "Administered Prices and the Inflationary Process",American Economic Review, 1959.
• Macroeconomic Theory, Macmillan Company, 1961; republished asMacroeconomics: Theory and Policy, 1978.
• Stemming World Inflation, TheAtlantic Institute, 1971.
• "An Incomes Policy for the 1970s",Review of Economics and Statistics, 1972.
• Macroeconomics: Theory and Policy, Macmillan Library Reference 1978.
• "The Costs of Inflation",American Economic Review, 1978.

• 1915 births
• 1998 deaths
• 20th-century American economists
• Ambassadors of the United States to Italy
• Distinguished fellows of the American Economic Association
• Economists from Michigan
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• American macroeconomists
• Presidents of the American Economic Association
• University of Michigan alumni
• University of Michigan faculty
• Western Michigan University alumni
• Writers from Kalamazoo, Michigan
• Chairs of the United States Council of Economic Advisers
• 20th-century American diplomats
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Members of Phi Kappa Phi

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