E.C.A. Analyst

Analyses o£ European economic conditions which are used by top U. S. policy makers in Washington for decisions are frequently the work of Ralph E. Holben '39, now a Senior Economist with the E.C.A. in Paris. It is his highly trained task to be ready at a moment's notice to prepare a condensed and concentrated review of economic history and current problems in any country in Western Europe.

The son of Ralph P. Holben, Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth, young Ralph Holben's main field of interest is Scandinavia. After receiving his M.A. degree from Columbia in 1940, he went for further graduate study to Princeton. Following two years' service in the Navy, he spent a year as economist in the U. S. Treasury Department. In 1947 he was awarded a scholarship for a year's study of political economy in Sweden, from the Swedish Institute of Stockholm, and was also elected an Honorary Fellow of the Scandinavian-American Foundation. He has been with E.C.A. since 1949, taking time off to prepare his doctoral dissertation on "Swedish Economic Policy and Economic Stability" for his Ph.D. degree from Columbia, received last year. His wife, Gudrun, is a Norwegian girl from Bergen, whom he met while working in Stockholm.