Mordecai Ezekiel


Mordecai Joseph Brill Ezekiel was an American agrarian economist who worked for the United States government and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He was a "New Deal economic advisor" who shaped much of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt's agricultural policy.

Education

He is credited with formulating the details of what was to become the Agriculture Adjustment Administration, and helped prepare a draft of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. After the 1932 presidential election, he also met with President-elect Franklin Roosevelt, Rexford Tugwell, M. L. Wilson, and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to discuss the farm policy of the new administration.
He and G.C. Haas described the pork cycle.

Personal life

Born in Richmond, Virginia, he was the son of Jacob and Rachel Brill Ezekiel. He had two brothers, Walter Naphtali Ezekiel, a plant pathologist, and Raphael Ezekiel, a graduate of West Point, and one sister, Bertha Brill Ezekiel.
Ezekiel married Lucille Finsterwald and they had three children—David, Jonathan, and Margot. He was also the uncle of the Hebrew poet Yosef Yehezkel. A scholarship in his name was endowed at the University of Maryland in 1963.

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