Lauchlin Currie - Colombia

Colombia

After a military coup in Colombia in 1953, Currie retired from economic advisory work and devoted himself to raising Holstein cattle on a farm outside Bogotá, and developed the highest-yielding dairy herd in the country. With the return of civilian government in 1958, President Alberto Lleras personally conferred Colombian citizenship upon him and Currie returned to advisory work for a succession of Colombian presidents. Between 1966 and 1971, he went abroad as a visiting professor in North American and British universities: Michigan State (1966), Simon Fraser (1967–1968 and 1969–1971), Glasgow (1968–1969) and Oxford (1969). He returned permanently to Colombia in May 1971 at the behest of President Misael Pastrana Borrero to be the architect of a new "Plan of the Four Strategies", with focus on urban housing and export diversification. The plan was implemented, with new institutions playing a major role in accelerating Colombia's urbanization.

Currie was chief economist at the Colombian National Planning Department from 1971 to 1981, followed by twelve years at the Colombian Institute of Savings and Housing until his death in 1993. There he doggedly defended the unique housing finance system (based on "units of constant purchasing power" for both savers and borrowers) established in 1972. The system significantly boosted Colombia's growth. He also advised on urban planning and played a major part in the first United Nations Habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976. His "cities-within-the-city" urban design and financing proposals (including the public recapture of land's socially created "valorización" or "unearned land value increments" as cities grow) were explained in Taming the Megalopolis published in 1976. He was also a professor at the National University of Colombia, the Javeriana University, and the University of the Andes. His writings were heavily influenced by his Harvard mentor Allyn Young. An important paper on Youngian endogenous growth theory was published posthumously in History of Political Economy (1997). On the day before he died, President Cesar Gaviria awarded him Colombia's highest honor, the Cruz de Boyaca, for services to his adopted country.