Paul Samuelson

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Paul A. Samuelson (born May 15, 1915, in Gary, Indiana) is an American economist known for his work in many fields of economics. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1947 and Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1970.

Academic Accomplishments:

• Received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from University of Chicago in 1935, (studied under Knight and Viner) • Received his 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 Chicago University and Oberlin College in 1961, and from Indiana University and East Anglia University (England) in 1966.

Professional positions:

• Came to M.I.T. in 1940 as an Assistant Professor of Economics and was appointed Associate Professor in 1944. • Served as a staff member of the Radiation Laboratory from 1944-1945 • Was Professor of International Economic Relations (part-time) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1945. • Was appointed Professor at M.I.T. in 1947 and is now an Institute Professor. • He was a Guggenheim Fellow from 1948-1949.

Samuelson served widely as a consultant:

• Worked for the National Resources Planning Board from 1941-1943 (in charge of war-time planning for continuing full employment) • 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 of the National Task Force on Economic Education from 1960-1961 • A consultant to the Rand Corporation since 1949. • An informal consultant for the United States Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisors. • Was a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank. • An Economic Advisor to Senator, candidate, and President-elect Kennedy, and later to President Lyndon B. Johnson • His consultation for the government brought him national recognition as an economic advisor. • In 1965 he was elected president of the International Economic Association.

Samuelson was also a member of a number of honorary and professional organizations:

• A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences • A fellow of the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy; • 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. • A member of Phi Beta Kappa.

As professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has worked in fields including:

Welfare economics, in which he popularised the Lindahl-Bowen-Samuelson conditions which are criteria for deciding whether an action will improve welfare;
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).
Monetary economics, where he devised the overlapping generations model as a way to analyze economic agents' behavior across multiple periods of time.

He was also the author of an influential economics textbook, Economics, first published in 1948, and revised regularly for the following fifty years.

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.

Along with Kenneth Arrow, he is considered one of the founders of modern neoclassical economics. The following is an excerpt from the reasons for awarding Samuelson the Nobel Prize:

Generally speaking, Samuelson's contribution has been that, more than any other contemporary economist, he has contributed to raising 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.

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