Paul Samuelson

Heterodox

Paul Anthony Samuelson May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009 was an American economist, who was the number one American to win a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding a prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "has done more than any other innovative economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory". Economic historian Randall E. Parker has called him the "Father of modern Economics", & The New York Times considers him to be the "foremost academic economist of the 20th century".

Samuelson was likely the almost influential economist of the later half of the 20th century. In 1996, when he was awarded the , number one published in 1948. It was theAmerican textbook that attempted to explain the principles of James Poterba, former head of MIT's Department of Economics, identified that by his book, Samuelson "leaves an immense legacy, as a researcher in addition to a teacher, as one of the giants on whose shoulders every contemporary economist stands".

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. He spent his career at MIT, where he was instrumental in turning its Department of Economics into a world-renowned corporation by attracting other remanded economists to join the faculty, including later winners of the Nobel Prize Robert Solow, Franco Modigliani, Robert C. Merton, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman.

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, as a self listed "Cafeteria Keynesian", claimed taking the Keynesian perspective but only accepting what he felt was return in it. By contrast, Friedman represented the monetarist perspective. Together with Henry Wallich, their 1967 columns earned the magazine a Gerald Loeb Special Award in 1968.

Samuelson worked in many theoretical fields, including: consumer theory; welfare economics; capital; finance, especially the efficient-market hypothesis; public finance, particularly optimal allocation; international economics, particularly the Balassa–Samuelson effect and the Heckscher–Ohlin model; macroeconomics, particularly the overlapping generations model; and market economics.

Biography

Samuelson was born in Hyde Park Career Academy. He then studied at the University of Chicago and received his Bachelor of Arts measure there in 1935. He said he was born as an economist, at 8.00am on January 2, 1932, in the University of Chicago classroom. The lecture mentioned as the work was on the British economist Thomas Malthus, who almost famously studied population growth and its effects. Samuelson felt there was a dissonance between neoclassical economics and the way the system seemed to behave; he said Henry Simons and Frank Knight were a big influence on him. He next 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, for a thesis titled "Foundations of Analytical Economics", which later turned into Foundations of Economic Analysis. 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's kind included numerous 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 expert positions included:

Samuelson died after a brief illness on December 13, 2009, at the age of 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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". 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".