L. deRycke; Authority on Economics
Laurence deRycke, professor emeritus of economics at Occidental College and an authority on international economics who served the State Department as a spokesman for American capitalism, died Wednesday at a Pasadena hospital. He was 82 and had retired from Occidental in 1970 to work in the private sector.
DeRycke, who held graduate degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of California, was considered an expert on business organization. He pursued that specialty both through his teaching and with the Joint Council on Economic Education and the Council for Advancement of Secondary Education.
DeRycke, who taught at Pomona College before going to Occidental in 1943, was chairman of the Los Angeles liberal arts school’s department of economics from 1950 to 1962.
From 1937 to 1939 he had been secretary of the State Department’s Interdepartmental Committee on Trade Agreements and in 1959 traveled to India and the Middle East to explain the purposes and products of capitalism.
He also had been an assistant field director of the Committee for Economic Development, president of the Southern California Economic Assn., director of the Pacific Southwest Academy of Political and Social Sciences and a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation.
Author of several publications in his field, he also wrote two high school texts on economics.
He is survived by his wife, Claire.
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