Ruth Allen (economist)

Ruth Alice Allen
Born	July 28, 1889 [1] Cameron, Texas, United States
Died	October 7, 1979 (aged 90) [1] Austin, Texas [1]
Nationality	American
Academic career
Field	Institutional economics
Institution	University of Texas at Austin
Alma mater	University 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] After graduating high school, she passed the teacher certification exam and taught for several years after. Allen then attended summer school in 1914 at Baylor University and Southwest Texas University, and received her permanent teaching diploma. ^[3] She 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. ^[4] Her doctoral advisor was Harry A. Millis and her dissertation committee included Frank Knight and Paul Douglas. ^[5] This dissertation focused on women working in the Texas cotton industry, which was one of the earliest detailed studies of female labor in Texas agriculture and emphasized the challenges they faced in the workforce. ^[6]

Career

Allen returned to University of 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. ^[5]

During Allen's time as a professor, she frequently spoke out in support of academic freedom and brought attention to the history of working people in Texas. This was evident in her most important works, The Labor of Women in the Production of Cotton, ^[7] 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. ^[8]

Notes

1. 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. Association, Texas State Historical. "Allen, Ruth Alice". Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 2025-03-20.
4. 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.
5. Dimand, Dimand & Forget, p. 8
6. "Association for Evolutionary Economics". Facebook . March 8, 2025.
7. Laura Woodworth-Ney (2008). Women in the American West. ABC-CLIO. pp. 216–. ISBN   978-1-59884-050-6.
8. 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.
• Byrd, B. K. (n.d.). Allen, Ruth Alice. Allen, Ruth Alice (1889–1979).

External links

• Ruth Allen Papers finding aid at University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections via Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO)