PAUL ANTHONY SAMUELSON
1915 – 2009
· Paul Anthony Samuelson was an American
economist and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences.
· The Swedish Royal Academies stated, when
awarding the prize in 1970, that he "has
done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of
scientific analysis in economic theory".
· Economic historian Randall E. Parker calls
him the "Father of Modern
Economics", and The New York Times considered him to be the "foremost academic economist of the
20th century"
· Samuelson was likely the most influential
economist of the later 20th century. In 1996, when he was awarded the National
Medal of Science, considered America's top science honor, President Bill
Clinton commended Samuelson for his "fundamental contributions to economic
science" for over 60 years.
· Samuelson considered Mathematics to be the
natural language for economists and contributed significantly to the
mathematical foundations of economics with his book Foundations of Economic
Analysis.
· Samuelson's book Foundations of Economic
Analysis (1946) is considered his magnum opus. It is derived from his doctoral
dissertation, and was inspired by the classical thermodynamic methods.
· He was author of the best-selling economics
textbook of all time Economics: An Introductory Analysis first
published in 1948. It was the second American textbook to explain the
principles of Keynesian economics and how to think about economics, and the
first one to be successful
· As professor of economics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuelson worked in many fields,
including:
Ø Consumer theory,
where he pioneered the revealed
preference approach, which is a method by which one can discern a
consumer's utility function, by observing their behavior. Rather than postulate
a utility function or a preference ordering, Samuelson imposed conditions
directly on the choices made by individuals – their preferences as revealed by
their choices.
Ø 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
Ø Capital theory,
where he is known for 1958 consumption loans model and a variety of turnpike
theorems and involved in Cambridge capital controversy.
Ø Finance theory, in
which he is known for the efficient-market
hypothesis.
Ø Public finance theory, in
which he is particularly known for his work on determining the optimal
allocation of resources in the presence of both public goods and private goods.
Ø International economics,
where he influenced the development of two important international trade models: the Balassa–Samuelson effect, and the
Heckscher–Ohlin model (with the Stolper–Samuelson theorem).
Ø Macroeconomics,
where he popularized the overlapping generations model as a way to analyze
economic agents' behavior across multiple periods of time and contributed to
formation of the neoclassical synthesis.
Ø Market economics:
Samuelson believed unregulated markets have drawbacks, he stated, "free
markets do not stabilise themselves. Zero regulating is vastly suboptimal to
rational regulating. Libertarianism is its own worst enemy!"
SOME OF HIS FAMOUS QUOTES
· “Thousands of important and intelligent men
have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe
it even after it was explained to them”
· “Good questions outrank easy answers.”
· “Sooner or later the Internet will become
profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and
automobiles.”
· “Globalization presumes sustained economic
growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political
support.”
·
Economics has never been a science - and it
is even less now than a few years ago.”
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