Paul Samuelson And Modern Economic Theory

Economics in a golden age: a personal memoir; Contributions to welfare economics; On general equilibrium and stability; On consumption theory; International trade theory.

A significant part of economics as we know it today is the outcome of battles that took place in the post-war years between Keynesians and monetarists. In the US, the focus of these battles was often between the neo-Keynesians at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Chicago monetarists. The undisputed leader of the MIT Keynesians was Paul A. Samuelson, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and arguably of all time. Samuelson’s output covered a vast number of subjects within economics, the quality of theseoften pioneering contributions unmatched in the modern era. The volume focuses both on how Samuelson’s work has been developed by others and on how that work fits into subsequent developments in the various fields of speciality within which Samuelson operated.

Paul A. Samuelson was the first American Nobel Laureate in economics, and the second overall. He was credited for "the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science." That recognition is now thirty years old and Samuelson remains at work in the cutting edge of the discipline. He is also widely known for a basic textbook that became a landmark learning tool throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This excellent collegial appreciation focuses heavily on Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis. In that work, and a series of brief essays, he has contributed to an integration of statics and dynamics by way of the correspondence principle. He has also combined the multiplier and accelerator mechanisms in a model of economic fluctuations; he has reformed the foundations of consumption theory by his concept of revealed preferences; he has developed or improved several major theorems within international trade; and created theories of maximum efficiency and maximum growth rate. Finally, he has clarified the role of collective goods in resource allocation. In considering the work and life of Samuelson, editor Puttaswamaiah, has assembled a worthy group of brilliant commentators. Among the analytic papers in this volume are "An essay on the Accuracy of Economic Prediction" by L.R. Klein, "Analytical Aspects of Anti-Inflation Policy" by Robert M. Solow, a paper by Vittorangelo Orati on Samuelson's linkage to Schumpeter and Keynes, "Money and Price Theory by Carlo Benetti and Jean Cartelier, and a concluding essay on "The Role of Samuelson's Economics" by Michael Emmett Brady. Most unusual in works of this kind are some strong critical statements, including a pungent examination of vanity as well as creativity in Samuelson's work. What emerges is a clear picture of a special scholar. Scholars and students will welcome it alike-a result that well fits the purpose and character of Samuelson. The festschrift has its origins in several issues of the International Journal of Applied Economics and Econometrics. Professor K. Puttaswamaiah has more than three decades of editing journals in economics. He is a member of the journal; Savings and Development issued at the University of Milan. He is author of Economic Development of Karnataka, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Nobel Economists: Lives and Contributions.

Paul Samuelson was at the heart of a revolution in economics. He was "the foremost academic economist of the 20th century," according to the New York Times, and the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. His work transformed the field of economics and helped give it the theoretical and mathematic rigor that increased its influence in business and policy making. In Founder of Modern Economics, Roger E. Backhouse explores the central importance of Samuelson's personality and social networks to understanding his intellectual development. This is the first of two volumes covering Samuelson's extended and productive life and career. This volume surveys Samuelson's early years growing up in the Midwest to his experiences at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, where leading scholars in economics and other disciplines stimulated and rewarded his curiosity. His thinking was influenced by the natural sciences and he understood that a critical, scientific approach increased insights into important social and economic questions. He realized that these questions could not be answered through rhetorical debate but required rigor. His "eureka" moment came, he said, when "a good fairy whispered to me that math was a skeleton key to solve age old problems in economics." Backhouse traces Samuelson's thinking from his early days to the publication of his groundbreaking book Foundations of Economic Analysis and Economics: An Introductory Analysis, which influenced generations of students. His work set the stage for economics to become a more cohesive and coherent discipline, based on mathematical techniques that provided surprising insights into many important topics, from business cycles to wage and unemployment rates, and from how competition influences trade to how tax rates affects tax collection. Founder of Modern Economics is a profound contribution to understanding how modern economics developed and the thinking of a revolutionary thinker.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

This is not a festschrift, but a study of the prodigious Samuelson phe nomenon, his history-making contributions to and impact on the econom ics of our age, and the intricate, often perplexing, and divergent trends in modern economics - all intensely controversial subjects that will be argued, scrutinized, and periodically reassessed by economists of various strands and traditions for years to come, for, as Samuelson wrote of Pigou, "immortality does have its price. " A scholar with such an out standing body of contributions "must expect other men to swarm about it" (1966, p. 1233), subject it to scholarly scrutiny, and challenge it. Although Paul Samuelson was 65 on May 15, 1980 (and our best wishes go out to him for long life and continued enrichment of economics), this is neither a birthday party nor a gathering of only the Good Fairies, for, as he himself has said of Marx, "a great scholar deserves the compliment of being judged seriously" and critically (1972, p. 268). In accordance with the rule of Roman law, audiatur et altera pars, I have invited representative scholars of widely divergent perceptions to offer their critical evaluation of the "age of Samuelson. " While the response was by and large gratifying, some scholars were unable to meet the deadline, ix x PREFACE and with much compunction I have had to expand my own essays to partly fill the gaps.

As one of the most famous economists of the twentieth century, Paul Anthony Samuelson revolutionized many branches of economic theory. As a diligent student of his predecessors, he reconstructed their economic analyses in the mathematical idiom he pioneered. Out of Samuelson's more than eighty articles, essays, and memoirs, the editors of this collection have selected seventeen. Twelve are mathematical reconstructions of some of the most famous work in the history of economic thought - work by David Hume, François Quesnay, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and others. One is a methodological essay defending the Whig history that he was sometimes accused of promulgating; two deal with the achievements of Joseph Schumpeter and Denis Robertson; and two review theoretical developments of his own time: Keynesian economics and monopolistic competition. The collection provides readers with a sense of the depth and breadth of Samuelson's contributions to the study of the history of economics.

Contains chapter overview and outline, learning objectives, key concept review, helpful hints, multiple choice questions and problem solving questions