Marvin Hoffenberg (1914–2012) was an American economist and political scientist. He was an economist for the

United States Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploym ...

, the

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

Operations Research Office The Operations Research Office (ORO) was a civilian military research center founded in 1948 by the United States Army. It was run under contract by Johns Hopkins University and is regarded as one of the founding institutes of operations research ...

, and

The Aerospace Corporation The Aerospace Corporation is an American nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in El Segundo, California. The corporation provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space mi ...

. He was a Professor of Political Science at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(UCLA) from 1965 to 1986.

Early life

Marvin Hoffenberg was born on July 7, 1914, in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

.'Marvin HOFFENBERG'
''The Los Angeles Times'', January 11, 2013 He graduated from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

with a bachelor's degree in 1939. He went on to receive a master's degree from the same university in 1940, and completed the coursework for the PhD in 1941.

Career

Hoffenberg worked as an economist for the

from 1941 to 1952. During that time, he published research suggested U.S. employment depended on foreign exports. Later in life, he recounted that the Labor Department was his only option as Washington, D.C., was still segregated: "if you were Jewish, you could work for the Department of Labor and, if you were Catholic, you could work for the Department of Commerce."Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
''The Theory that Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, & Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy''
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2011, p. 110 Hoffenberg became a consultant for the

Mutual Security Agency The Mutual Security Agency (1951–1953) was a US agency to strengthen European allies of World War II through military assistance and economic recovery. History The Mutual Security Agency was established by the passing of the Mutual Security Ac ...

working on the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...

in Paris in 1952. Back in the United States, he worked for the

from 1952 to 1956. During that time, he co-authored '' A Time Series Analysis of Interindustry Demands'' with

Kenneth Arrow Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972. In economics ...

. Later, he worked as an economist for DeVegh & Co., the

Committee for Economic Development The Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board (CED) is an American nonprofit and nonpartisan public policy think tank. The board of trustees consist primarily of senior corporate executives from a range of U.S. industries an ...

, and

. Hoffenberg joined the

(UCLA) as a research economist in 1965. He taught in the Department of Political Science from 1967 to 1970 as well as the

UCLA School of Public Health The UCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health is the graduate school of public health at UCLA, and is located within the Center for Health Sciences building on UCLA's campus in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California ...

from 1967 to 1972. He continued to teach Political Science at UCLA until 1986.

Personal life

On July 20, 1947, he married Betty S. Hoffenberg. They were both Jewish. They had two sons. They resided in the

Pacific Palisades, California Pacific Palisades is a neighborhood in the Westside Los Angeles, Westside region of Los Angeles, California, situated about west of Downtown Los Angeles. Pacific Palisades was formally founded in 1921 by a Chautauqua, Methodist organization, an ...

, near Los Angeles.

Death and legacy

He died on December 30, 2012. The Marvin Hoffenberg Chair in American Politics and Public Policy in the Department of Political Science at UCLA is named in his honor. It was formerly held by

Timothy Groseclose Timothy Jay Groseclose (born September 22, 1964) is an American academic. He is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, where he holds the Adam Smith Chair at the Mercatus Center. Early life Timothy Groseclose was born on September 22 ...

and is now held by

Lynn Vavreck Lynn Vavreck (born 1968) is an American political scientist and columnist. She is the Marvin Hoffenberg Chair in American Politics and Public Policy at University of California, Los Angeles and a contributing columnist to ''The New York Times'' ...

. Additionally, since 2005, the Bollens-Ries-Hoffenberg Lecture is partly named for him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffenberg, Marvin 1914 births 2012 deaths Scientists from Buffalo, New York People from Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles Ohio State University alumni United States Department of Labor officials University of California, Los Angeles faculty RAND Corporation people Economists from New York (state) American political scientists Jewish American academics Jewish scientists Economists from California 21st-century American Jews