Martin Anderson (economist)

Martin Anderson (August 5, 1936 – January 3, 2015) was an economist, policy analyst, author and one of President Ronald Reagan's leading advisors.

Biography

Anderson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1936. He received his AB (summa cum laude) from Dartmouth College in 1957, and his MS in engineering and business administration at Thayer School of Engineering and Tuck School of Business Administration in 1958. In 1962, he earned the first PhD in industrial management ever granted by a college or university from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

From 1961 to 1962, he was a research fellow at the Joint Center for Urban Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and from 1962 to 1965 was assistant professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, and associate professor from 1965 to 1968. At age 28, he was one of the youngest teachers to receive tenure in Columbia's history.

An "acolyte" of the philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, Anderson became personally acquainted with Rand and her circle in the 1960s, and he attended courses at the Nathaniel Branden Institute.

After serving as director of policy research for the 1968 Presidential campaign of Richard Nixon, Anderson was Special Assistant to the President from 1969 to 1970, and then, from 1970 to 1971, "Special Consultant to the President of the United States for Systems Analysis". It was through his recommendation that Alan Greenspan began his career in government. Along with Walter Oi and Milton Friedman he is credited with helping to end military conscription in the United States.

He was a senior policy adviser to the Reagan presidential campaigns of 1976 and 1980, and under President Ronald Reagan he served as the chief domestic policy advisor from 1981 to 1982, and then as a member of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board from 1982 to 1989.

Under President George H.W. Bush, Anderson served as a member of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control from 1987 to 1993.

Anderson was a trustee of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation from 1985–90 and a member of the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisers from 1993–98.

He became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University in 1971, and was named Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow there in 1998.

Anderson was the editor of Registration and the Draft (Hoover Press, 1982), and the author of The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal: 1949–62 (MIT Press, 1964), Conscription: A Select and Annotated Bibliography (Hoover Press, 1976), Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States (Hoover Press, 1978), The Military Draft (Hoover Press, 1982), Revolution: The Reagan Legacy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988) and Impostors in the Temple (Simon & Schuster, 1992). He is the coauthor of Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (Free Press, 2001), Reagan, In His Own Voice: Ronald Reagan's Radio Addresses (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2001) and Stories In His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan (Free Press, 2001).

He married Annelise Graebner on September 25, 1965.