At Harvard in the early 1930s Currie pioneered a monetary diagnosis of the 1929–32 collapse and placed blame on the Federal Reserve Board. As a prominent New Dealer at the Fed during 1934–9 he urged contra-cyclical monetary and fiscal activism. During 1939–45 he worked in Washington as President Roosevelt's economic adviser. After heading a World Bank mission to Colombia in 1949 he spent 40 years advising on national development there. He emphasized urban housing as a leading sector, based on an innovative housing finance system, and extended Allyn Young's ideas on macroeconomic increasing returns and endogenous growth.