Economist, born in Gary, Indiana, USA. By age 26 he had obtained his PhD from Harvard and secured a teaching position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His distinguished career included writings on a wide variety of subjects in economics, including international trade, production theory, capital theory, financial analysis, growth theory, and the history of economic thought. His textbook, Economics (1948, 11th edn 1980) has been translated into over a dozen languages. In 1970 he received the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Paul Samuelson|
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| Born |
May 15, 1915 Gary, Indiana |
|---|---|
| Residence | USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Economics |
| Institution | MIT |
| Alma Mater |
Harvard University (PH.D.) University of Chicago (B.A.) |
| Doctoral Advisor | Edwin Bidwell Wilson |
| Doctoral Students |
Lawrence Klein Robert C. Merton |
| Known for |
Mathematical economics Economic methodology Revealed preferences theory International trade theory Economic growth theory Public goods theory |
| Notable Prizes |
John Bates Clark Medal (1947) Nobel Prize in Economics (1970) |
Paul A. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1947 and Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (more commonly known as Nobel Prize in Economics) in 1970.
Academic accomplishments
Received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from University of Chicago in 1935 (where studied under Knight and Viner) Received degrees of Master of Arts in 1936 and Doctor of Philosophy in 1941 from Harvard University (where he studied under Schumpeter and Leontief) A Social Science Research Council predoctoral fellow from 1935-1937 A member of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1937-1940 A Ford Foundation Research Fellow from 1958-1959 Received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from the University of Chicago and Oberlin College in 1961, and from Indiana University and East Anglia University (England) in 1966. Served as a staff member of the Radiation Laboratory from 1944-1945 Professor of International Economic Relations (part-time) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1945.Consultancy
The War Production Board and Office of War Mobilization and Reconstruction in 1945 (economic and general planning program) The United States Treasury, 1945-1952 The Bureau of the Budget in 1952 The Research Advisory Panel to the President's National Goals Commission from 1959-1960 The Research Advisory Board Committee for Economic Development in 1960. A member and past President (1961) of the American Economic Association A member of the editorial board and past-President (1951) of the Econometric Society A fellow, council member and past Vice-President of the Economic Society.Fields of interest
As professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuelson has worked in fields including:
Welfare economics, in which he popularised the Lindahl-Bowen-Samuelson conditions (criteria for deciding whether an action will improve welfare) and demonstrated in 1950 the insufficiency of a national-income index to reveal which of two social options was uniformly outside the other's (feasible) Possibility function (Collected Scientific Papers, v.Publications
Samuelson's book Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947, Enlarged ed.
Thus, "a general theory of economic theories" (Samuelson, 1983, p. The book proposes two general hypotheses as sufficient for its purposes:
maximizing behavior of agents (including consumers as to utility and business firms as to profit) and economic systems (including a market and an economy) in stable equilibrium.The chapter on welfare economics "attempt(s) to give a brief but fairly complete survey of the whole field of welfare economics" (Samuelson, 1947, p.
Miscellaneous
Stanislaw Ulam once challenged Samuelson to name one theory in all of the social sciences which is both true and nontrivial. - Paul Samuelson
Impact
Along with Kenneth Arrow, Samuelson is considered one of the founders of modern neoclassical economics. The following is an excerpt on the reasons for awarding him the Nobel Prize:
More than any other contemporary economist, Samuelson has helped to raise the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. According to the book Harvard Rules, Summers's father (himself a distinguished economist) changed his family name from Samuelson to Summers following the example of his oldest brother, who changed the name in order to sound less Jewish in a time when succeeding in the economic world was easier for those of other religions.
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