http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson

Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) 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, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory".[1] Economic historian Randall E. Parker calls him the "Father of Modern Economics",[2] and The New York Times considered him to be the "foremost academic economist of the 20th century".[3]

He was author of the largest-selling economics textbook of all time: Economics: An Introductory Analysis, first published in 1948.[citation needed] 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,[4] and is now in its 19th edition, having sold nearly 4 million copies in 40 languages. James Poterba, former head of MIT's Department of Economics, noted that by his book, Samuelson "leaves an immense legacy, as a researcher and a teacher, as one of the giants on whose shoulders every contemporary economist stands".[1] 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.[1]

He entered the University of Chicago at age 16, during the depths of the Great Depression, and received his PhD in economics from Harvard. After graduating, he became an assistant professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when he was 25 years of age and a full professor at age 32. In 1966, he was named Institute Professor, MIT's highest faculty honor.[1] He spent his career at MIT where he was instrumental in turning its Department of Economics into a world-renowned institution by attracting other noted economists to join the faculty, including Robert M. Solow, Franco Modigliani, Robert C. Merton, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman, all of whom went on to win Nobel Prizes.

He served as an advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and was a consultant to the United States Treasury, the Bureau of the Budget and the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Samuelson wrote a weekly column for Newsweek magazine along with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman, where they represented opposing sides: Samuelson took the Keynesian perspective, and Friedman represented the Monetarist perspective.[5] Samuelson died on December 13, 2009, at the age of 94.

Contents [show] Biography[edit] Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana, on May 15, 1915, to Frank Samuelson, a pharmacist, and the former Ella Lipton. His family, he said, was "made up of upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants from Poland who had prospered considerably in World War I, because Gary was a brand new steel town when my family went there".[3] In 1923 Samuelson moved to Chicago; he graduated from Hyde Park High School (now Hyde Park Career Academy); he then studied at the University of Chicago and received his Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1935. He said he was born as an economist, at 8.00am on January 2, 1932, in the University of Chicago classroom.[6] He felt there was a dissonance between neoclassical economics and the way the system seemed to behave, and he said Henry Simons and Frank Knight was a big influence on him.[7] He then completed his Master of Arts degree in 1936, and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1941 at Harvard University. He won the David A. Wells prize in 1941 for writing the best doctoral dissertation at Harvard University in economics. As a graduate student at Harvard, Samuelson studied economics under Joseph Schumpeter, Wassily Leontief, Gottfried Haberler, and the "American Keynes" Alvin Hansen. Samuelson moved to MIT as an Assistant Professor in 1940 and remained there until his death. Samuelson comes from a family of well-known economists, including brother Robert Summers, sister-in-law Anita Summers, brother-in-law Kenneth Arrow and nephew Larry Summers.

During his seven decades as an economist, Samuelson's professional positions included:

Assistant Professor of Economics at M.I.T, 1940, Associate Professor, 1944. Member of the Radiation Laboratory 1944–1945. Professor of International Economic Relations (part-time) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1945. Guggenheim Fellowship from 1948 to 1949 Professor of Economics at MIT beginning in 1947 and Institute Professor beginning in 1962. Vernon F. Taylor Visiting Distinguished Professor at Trinity University (Texas) in Spring 1989. Death[edit] Samuelson died after a brief illness on December 13, 2009, at the age of 94.[8] His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3] James M. Poterba, an economics professor at MIT and the president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, commented that Samuelson "leaves an immense legacy, as a researcher and a teacher, as one of the giants on whose shoulders every contemporary economist stands".[8] Susan Hockfield, the president of MIT, said that Samuelson "transformed everything he touched: the theoretical foundations of his field, the way economics was taught around the world, the ethos and stature of his department, the investment practices of MIT, and the lives of his colleagues and students".[9]

Impact[edit] Samuelson is considered to be one of the founders of neo-Keynesian economics and a seminal figure in the development of neoclassical economics. In awarding him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences the committee stated:

More than any other contemporary economist, Samuelson has helped to raise the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. He has simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory. He has also shown the fundamental unity of both the problems and analytical techniques in economics, partly by a systematic application of the methodology of maximization for a broad set of problems. This means that Samuelson's contributions range over a large number of different fields.

He was also essential in creating the Neoclassical synthesis, which incorporated Keynesian and neoclassical principles and still dominates current mainstream economics. In 2003, Samuelson was one of the ten Nobel Prize winning economists signing the Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts.[10]

Publications[edit] Foundations of Economic Analysis[edit] Samuelson's book Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947, Enlarged ed. 1983), is considered his magnum opus. It is derived from his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, and makes use of the classical thermodynamic methods of American thermodynamicist Willard Gibbs.[11] The book proposes to:

examine underlying analogies between central features in theoretical and applied economics and study how operationally meaningful theorems can be derived with a small number of analogous methods (p. 3), in order to derive "a general theory of economic theories" (Samuelson, 1983, p. xxvi). The book showed how these goals could be parsimoniously and fruitfully achieved, using the language of the mathematics applied to diverse subfields of economics. 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. In the course of analysis, comparative statics, (the analysis of changes in equilibrium of the system that result from a parameter change of the system) is formalized and clearly stated.

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. 252). It also exposits on and develops what became commonly called the Bergson–Samuelson social welfare function. It shows how to represent (in the maximization calculus) all real-valued economic measures of any belief system that is required to rank consistently different feasible social configurations in an ethical sense as "better than", "worse than", or "indifferent to" each other (p. 221).

Economics[edit] Samuelson is also author (and since 1985 co-author) of an influential principles textbook, Economics, first published in 1948, now in its 19th edition. The book has been translated into forty-one languages and sold over four million copies; it is considered the best-selling economics textbook in history. Written in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II, it helped to popularize the insights of John Maynard Keynes. A main focus was how to avoid, or at least mitigate, the recurring slumps in economic activity. Samuelson wrote: "It is not too much to say that the widespread creation of dictatorships and the resulting World War II stemmed in no small measure from the world's failure to meet this basic economic problem [the Great Depression] adequately."[12] This reflected the concern of Keynes himself with the economic causes of war and the importance of economic policy in promoting peace.[13] Samuelson's influential textbook has been criticized for including comparative growth rates between the United States and the Soviet Union that were inconsistent with historical GNP differences.[14] The 1967 edition extrapolates the possibility of Soviet/U.S. real GNP parity between 1977 and 1995. Each subsequent edition extrapolated a date range further in the future until those graphs were dropped from the 1985 edition.[15] Samuelson concluded the economic description of the Soviet Union and marxism in 1989: "Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that ... a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." [16] The Revolutions of 1989 happened during the same year and the Soviet Union broke up two years later.

Other publications[edit] There are 388 papers to date in Samuelson's Collected Scientific Papers. Stanley Fischer (1987, p. 234) writes that taken together they are unique in their verve, breadth of economic and general knowledge, mastery of setting, and generosity of allusions to predecessors.

Samuelson is co-editor of Inside the Economist's Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists (Blackwell Publishing, 2007), along with William A. Barnett, a collection of candid interviews with top economists of the 20th century.

Fields of interest[edit] As professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuelson worked in many fields including:

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. 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. 2, ch. 77; Fischer, 1987, p. 236). Capital Theory, where he is known for 1958 consumption loans model and a variety of turnpike theorems and involved in Cambridge capital controversy. Finance theory, in which he is known for Efficient-market hypothesis. 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. 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). Macroeconomics, where he popularized the overlapping generations model as a way to analyze economic agents' behavior across multiple periods of time (Collected Scientific Papers, v. 1, ch. 21) and contributed to formation of Neoclassical synthesis. Miscellaneous[edit] Stanislaw Ulam once challenged Samuelson to name one theory in all of the social sciences which is both true and nontrivial. Several years later, Samuelson responded with David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage: That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them.[17]

For many years, Samuelson wrote a column for Newsweek. One article included Samuelson's most quoted remark, and a favorite economics joke:

To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties.[18]

He is honored today throughout the economic profession. The annual softball game between the Economics and Agricultural Economics departments of the University of California, Davis is referred to as the Samuelson Cup.

Memberships[edit] member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of Royal Society of London fellow of the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy; member and past President (1961) of the American Economic Association member of the editorial board and past-President (1951) of the Econometric Society fellow, council member and past Vice-President of the Royal Economic Society. member of Phi Beta Kappa. List of publications[edit] 1947, Enlarged ed. 1983. Foundations of Economic Analysis, Harvard University Press. 1948. Economics: An Introductory Analysis, ISBN 0-07-074741-5; with William D. Nordhaus (since 1985), 2009, 19th ed., McGraw–Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-126383-2 1952. "Economic Theory and Mathematics – An Appraisal," American Economic Review, 42(2), pp. 56–66. 1954. "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure". Review of Economics and Statistics, 36 (4): 387–389. doi:10.2307/1925895 1958. Linear Programming and Economic Analysis with Robert Dorfman and Robert M. Solow, McGraw–Hill. Chapter-preview links. The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, MIT Press. Preview links for vol. 1–3 below. Contents links for vol. 4–7. 1966. Vol. 1, 1937–mid-1964. 1966. Vol. 2, 1937–mid-1964. 1972. Vol. 3, mid-1964–1970. 1977. Vol. 4, 1971–76. 1986. Vol. 5, 1977–1985. Description 2011. Vol. 6, 1986–2009. Description. 2011. Vol. 7, 1986–2009. Paul A. Samuelson Papers, 1930s–2010, Rubenstein Library, Duke University. 2007. Inside the Economist's Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists with William A. Barnett, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 1-4051-5917-0

פול אנתוני סמואלסון

' (באנגלית: Paul Anthony Samuelson; ‏ 15 במאי 1915 – 13 בדצמבר 2009) היה מקרו-כלכלן יהודי אמריקאי. חתן פרס נובל לכלכלה לשנת 1970 (כזוכה יחיד).

תוכן עניינים 1 ביוגרפיה 2 תרומותיו למדע הכלכלה 3 משפחתו 4 ספרו בתרגום עברי 5 ראו גם 6 קישורים חיצוניים 7 הערות שוליים ביוגרפיה סמואלסון נולד ב-1915 באינדיאנה. ב-1935 קיבל תואר ראשון באוניברסיטת שיקגו וב-1936 תואר שני. קיבל תואר דוקטור ב-1941 באוניברסיטת הרווארד. לימד כפרופסור במכון הטכנולוגי של מסצ'וסטס (MIT) – משנת 1944 כיהן כפרופסור חבר ומ-1947 כפרופסור מן המניין. באותה שנה היה הזוכה הראשון במדליית ג'ון בייטס קלארק, המוענקת על ידי התאחדות הכלכלנים האמריקאית לכלכלן אמריקאי מתחת לגיל 40 שלדעת ההתאחדות תרם את התרומה הגדולה ביותר למחשבה ולידע הכלכלי.

תרומותיו למדע הכלכלה

השער הפנימי של הספר "תורת הכלכלה" מאת פול א. סמואלסון שיצא בהוצאת סטימצקי בשנת 1962. לספר 790 עמודים. בשנת 1948 פרסם את הספר "תורת הכלכלה", המשמש עד היום[1] כספר לימוד בסיסי באוניברסיטאות בחוגים לכלכלה. בספר הציג את הרחבתו לכלכלה הקיינסיאנית, על פי שיטת הכלכלה הנאו-קלאסית. היה בין הראשונים ששילב רעיונות מתורת התרמודינמיקה במחקר הכלכלי. ב-1960 ניסחו פול סמואלסון ורוברט סולו מחדש את עקומת פיליפס על ידי החלפת השינוי בשכר בשיעור האינפלציה.

סמואלסון עסק בתחומים רבים ובין היתר:

כלכלת רווחה – שם יצר את תנאי סמואלסון-מישי (קריטריון החלטה האם פעולה תשפר את הרווחה) כאשר MRSi הוא שעור התחלופה השולי של הפרט ה-i ו-MRT הוא שעור התחלופה השולי של הכלכלה בין מוצר ציבורי לבין מוצר פרטי שנבחר בצורה שרירותית. :{\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}MRS_{i}=MRT}{\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}MRS_{i}=MRT}

כלכלה ציבורית – שם ידועה במיוחד עבודתו לגבי קביעת ההקצאה האופטימלית של משאבים כאשר יש גם מוצרים ציבוריים וגם מוצרים פרטיים. כלכלה בינלאומית – בתחום זה השפיע סמואלסון על פיתוח שני מודלים חשובים של סחר בינלאומי: אפקט בלסה-סמואלסון ומודל הקשר-אולין. מקרו-כלכלה – שם תרם למודל הדורות החופפים כדרך לניתוח התנהגות של סוכנים כלכליים במרוצת תקופות זמן רבות. תאוריית הצרכן – שם פעל כחלוץ בתחום תאוריית ההעדפות הנגלית, שיטה שאפשרה לאתר את האופציה הטובה ביותר וכך להגדיר פונקציות תועלת של הצרכן, על ידי התבוננות על התנהגות הצרכן. משפחתו אחיו הצעיר רוברט סאמרס (אנ') היה פרופסור לכלכלה באוניברסיטת פנסילבניה; אשתו של סאמרס, אניטה סאמרס (אנ'), היא פרופסור אמריטה באותה אוניברסיטה; אחיה (גיסו של אחיו של סמואלסון) קנת' ארו הוא פרופסור לכלכלה באוניברסיטת סטנפורד וחתן פרס נובל לכלכלה לשנת 1972; בנם של בני הזוג סאמרס (אחיינו של סמואלסון) לורנס סאמרס, הוא פרופסור לכלכלה באוניברסיטת הרווארד, שכיהן בעבר ככלכלן הראשי של הבנק העולמי, כנשיא אוניברסיטת הרווארד, כמזכיר האוצר של ארצות הברית וכמנהל המועצה הלאומית לכלכלה בבית הלבן.

ספרו בתרגום עברי פול א' סמואלסון, תורת הכלכלה; תרגם: מ' אטר, ירושלים – תל אביב – חיפה: סטימצקי, 1961–1965. (מהדורה ב מתוקנת: תשכ"ג; מהדורה ג מתוקנת: תשל"ג) ראו גם עיינו גם בפורטלים: P Economy.png פורטל כלכלה P vip.svg פורטל אישים קישורים חיצוניים מיזמי קרן ויקימדיה ויקישיתוף תמונות ומדיה בוויקישיתוף: פול סמואלסון פול סמואלסון , באתר פרס נובל (באנגלית) פול סמואלסון , באתר פרויקט הגנאלוגיה במתמטיקה פול סמואלסון , באתר dblp פול סמואלסון , באתר Google Scholar ‫סטנלי פישר, פול סמואלסון: הכלכלן שהעדיף להיות צודק, גרסה ערוכה של נאום לזכר פול סמואלסון , באתר TheMarker‏, 26 באפריל 2010‬ פול סמואלסון , באתר אנציקלופדיה בריטניקה (באנגלית) פול סמואלסון , באתר "Find a Grave" (באנגלית) https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%9C_%D7%A1%D7%9E%D7%95...

-------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson

Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) 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, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory".[1] Economic historian Randall E. Parker calls him the "Father of Modern Economics",[2] and The New York Times considered him to be the "foremost academic economist of the 20th century".[3]

He was author of the largest-selling economics textbook of all time: Economics: An Introductory Analysis, first published in 1948.[citation needed] 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,[4] and is now in its 19th edition, having sold nearly 4 million copies in 40 languages. James Poterba, former head of MIT's Department of Economics, noted that by his book, Samuelson "leaves an immense legacy, as a researcher and a teacher, as one of the giants on whose shoulders every contemporary economist stands".[1] 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.[1]

He entered the University of Chicago at age 16, during the depths of the Great Depression, and received his PhD in economics from Harvard. After graduating, he became an assistant professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when he was 25 years of age and a full professor at age 32. In 1966, he was named Institute Professor, MIT's highest faculty honor.[1] He spent his career at MIT where he was instrumental in turning its Department of Economics into a world-renowned institution by attracting other noted economists to join the faculty, including Robert M. Solow, Franco Modigliani, Robert C. Merton, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman, all of whom went on to win Nobel Prizes.

He served as an advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and was a consultant to the United States Treasury, the Bureau of the Budget and the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Samuelson wrote a weekly column for Newsweek magazine along with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman, where they represented opposing sides: Samuelson took the Keynesian perspective, and Friedman represented the Monetarist perspective.[5] Samuelson died on December 13, 2009, at the age of 94.

Contents [show] Biography[edit] Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana, on May 15, 1915, to Frank Samuelson, a pharmacist, and the former Ella Lipton. His family, he said, was "made up of upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants from Poland who had prospered considerably in World War I, because Gary was a brand new steel town when my family went there".[3] In 1923 Samuelson moved to Chicago; he graduated from Hyde Park High School (now Hyde Park Career Academy); he then studied at the University of Chicago and received his Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1935. He said he was born as an economist, at 8.00am on January 2, 1932, in the University of Chicago classroom.[6] He felt there was a dissonance between neoclassical economics and the way the system seemed to behave, and he said Henry Simons and Frank Knight was a big influence on him.[7] He then completed his Master of Arts degree in 1936, and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1941 at Harvard University. He won the David A. Wells prize in 1941 for writing the best doctoral dissertation at Harvard University in economics. As a graduate student at Harvard, Samuelson studied economics under Joseph Schumpeter, Wassily Leontief, Gottfried Haberler, and the "American Keynes" Alvin Hansen. Samuelson moved to MIT as an Assistant Professor in 1940 and remained there until his death. Samuelson comes from a family of well-known economists, including brother Robert Summers, sister-in-law Anita Summers, brother-in-law Kenneth Arrow and nephew Larry Summers.

During his seven decades as an economist, Samuelson's professional positions included:

Assistant Professor of Economics at M.I.T, 1940, Associate Professor, 1944. Member of the Radiation Laboratory 1944–1945. Professor of International Economic Relations (part-time) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1945. Guggenheim Fellowship from 1948 to 1949 Professor of Economics at MIT beginning in 1947 and Institute Professor beginning in 1962. Vernon F. Taylor Visiting Distinguished Professor at Trinity University (Texas) in Spring 1989. Death[edit] Samuelson died after a brief illness on December 13, 2009, at the age of 94.[8] His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3] James M. Poterba, an economics professor at MIT and the president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, commented that Samuelson "leaves an immense legacy, as a researcher and a teacher, as one of the giants on whose shoulders every contemporary economist stands".[8] Susan Hockfield, the president of MIT, said that Samuelson "transformed everything he touched: the theoretical foundations of his field, the way economics was taught around the world, the ethos and stature of his department, the investment practices of MIT, and the lives of his colleagues and students".[9]

Impact[edit] Samuelson is considered to be one of the founders of neo-Keynesian economics and a seminal figure in the development of neoclassical economics. In awarding him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences the committee stated:

More than any other contemporary economist, Samuelson has helped to raise the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. He has simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory. He has also shown the fundamental unity of both the problems and analytical techniques in economics, partly by a systematic application of the methodology of maximization for a broad set of problems. This means that Samuelson's contributions range over a large number of different fields.

He was also essential in creating the Neoclassical synthesis, which incorporated Keynesian and neoclassical principles and still dominates current mainstream economics. In 2003, Samuelson was one of the ten Nobel Prize winning economists signing the Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts.[10]

Publications[edit] Foundations of Economic Analysis[edit] Samuelson's book Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947, Enlarged ed. 1983), is considered his magnum opus. It is derived from his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, and makes use of the classical thermodynamic methods of American thermodynamicist Willard Gibbs.[11] The book proposes to:

examine underlying analogies between central features in theoretical and applied economics and study how operationally meaningful theorems can be derived with a small number of analogous methods (p. 3), in order to derive "a general theory of economic theories" (Samuelson, 1983, p. xxvi). The book showed how these goals could be parsimoniously and fruitfully achieved, using the language of the mathematics applied to diverse subfields of economics. 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. In the course of analysis, comparative statics, (the analysis of changes in equilibrium of the system that result from a parameter change of the system) is formalized and clearly stated.

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. 252). It also exposits on and develops what became commonly called the Bergson–Samuelson social welfare function. It shows how to represent (in the maximization calculus) all real-valued economic measures of any belief system that is required to rank consistently different feasible social configurations in an ethical sense as "better than", "worse than", or "indifferent to" each other (p. 221).

Economics[edit] Samuelson is also author (and since 1985 co-author) of an influential principles textbook, Economics, first published in 1948, now in its 19th edition. The book has been translated into forty-one languages and sold over four million copies; it is considered the best-selling economics textbook in history. Written in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II, it helped to popularize the insights of John Maynard Keynes. A main focus was how to avoid, or at least mitigate, the recurring slumps in economic activity. Samuelson wrote: "It is not too much to say that the widespread creation of dictatorships and the resulting World War II stemmed in no small measure from the world's failure to meet this basic economic problem [the Great Depression] adequately."[12] This reflected the concern of Keynes himself with the economic causes of war and the importance of economic policy in promoting peace.[13] Samuelson's influential textbook has been criticized for including comparative growth rates between the United States and the Soviet Union that were inconsistent with historical GNP differences.[14] The 1967 edition extrapolates the possibility of Soviet/U.S. real GNP parity between 1977 and 1995. Each subsequent edition extrapolated a date range further in the future until those graphs were dropped from the 1985 edition.[15] Samuelson concluded the economic description of the Soviet Union and marxism in 1989: "Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that ... a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." [16] The Revolutions of 1989 happened during the same year and the Soviet Union broke up two years later.

Other publications[edit] There are 388 papers to date in Samuelson's Collected Scientific Papers. Stanley Fischer (1987, p. 234) writes that taken together they are unique in their verve, breadth of economic and general knowledge, mastery of setting, and generosity of allusions to predecessors.

Samuelson is co-editor of Inside the Economist's Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists (Blackwell Publishing, 2007), along with William A. Barnett, a collection of candid interviews with top economists of the 20th century.

Fields of interest[edit] As professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuelson worked in many fields including:

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. 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. 2, ch. 77; Fischer, 1987, p. 236). Capital Theory, where he is known for 1958 consumption loans model and a variety of turnpike theorems and involved in Cambridge capital controversy. Finance theory, in which he is known for Efficient-market hypothesis. 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. 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). Macroeconomics, where he popularized the overlapping generations model as a way to analyze economic agents' behavior across multiple periods of time (Collected Scientific Papers, v. 1, ch. 21) and contributed to formation of Neoclassical synthesis. Miscellaneous[edit] Stanislaw Ulam once challenged Samuelson to name one theory in all of the social sciences which is both true and nontrivial. Several years later, Samuelson responded with David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage: That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them.[17]

For many years, Samuelson wrote a column for Newsweek. One article included Samuelson's most quoted remark, and a favorite economics joke:

To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties.[18]

He is honored today throughout the economic profession. The annual softball game between the Economics and Agricultural Economics departments of the University of California, Davis is referred to as the Samuelson Cup.

Memberships[edit] member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of Royal Society of London fellow of the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy; member and past President (1961) of the American Economic Association member of the editorial board and past-President (1951) of the Econometric Society fellow, council member and past Vice-President of the Royal Economic Society. member of Phi Beta Kappa. List of publications[edit] 1947, Enlarged ed. 1983. Foundations of Economic Analysis, Harvard University Press. 1948. Economics: An Introductory Analysis, ISBN 0-07-074741-5; with William D. Nordhaus (since 1985), 2009, 19th ed., McGraw–Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-126383-2 1952. "Economic Theory and Mathematics – An Appraisal," American Economic Review, 42(2), pp. 56–66. 1954. "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure". Review of Economics and Statistics, 36 (4): 387–389. doi:10.2307/1925895 1958. Linear Programming and Economic Analysis with Robert Dorfman and Robert M. Solow, McGraw–Hill. Chapter-preview links. The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, MIT Press. Preview links for vol. 1–3 below. Contents links for vol. 4–7. 1966. Vol. 1, 1937–mid-1964. 1966. Vol. 2, 1937–mid-1964. 1972. Vol. 3, mid-1964–1970. 1977. Vol. 4, 1971–76. 1986. Vol. 5, 1977–1985. Description 2011. Vol. 6, 1986–2009. Description. 2011. Vol. 7, 1986–2009. Paul A. Samuelson Papers, 1930s–2010, Rubenstein Library, Duke University. 2007. Inside the Economist's Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists with William A. Barnett, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 1-4051-5917-0