Thursday, March 29, 2018

Alfred North Whitehead and the sociology of knowledge


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Photo license: CC BY-SA 4.0

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was a philosopher best known for co-authoring Principia Mathematica in 1910 with Bertrand Russell. Historian Carl Becker said,
"Professor Whitehead has recently restored a seventeenth century phrase - 'climate of opinion'. The phrase is much needed. Whether arguments command assent or not depends less upon the logic that conveys them than upon the climate of opinion in which they are sustained." (The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers, 1932)
The rest of this post is some quotes from Whitehead.

Sociology of knowledge


"A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even their most abstract ideas are, to some extent conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives." (Quoted in Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead by Lucian Price)

"Systems, scientific and philosophic come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime, each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance." (Adventures of ideas, 1933)

"The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader." (The Aims of Education, 1929)

Reason


"The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction." (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)

"Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity... the task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection." (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)

Mathematics


"By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advance problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race." (An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911)

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." (An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911)

"The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit." (Science and the Modern World, 1925)

Bertrand Russell and the philosophy of logic


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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was an influential philosopher best known for his contributions to analytic philosophy. Nicholas Griffin said
"It is difficult to overstate the extent to which Russell's thought dominated twentieth century analytic philosophy: virtually every strand in its development either originated with him or was transformed by being transmitted through him." (The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell, 2003)
Philosopher A.J. Ayer said,
"The popular conception of a philosopher as one who combines universal learning with the direction of human conduct was more nearly satisfied by Bertrand Russell than by any other philosopher of our time." (Bertrand Russell as a Philosopher, 1972)
The rest of this post is some quotes from Russell.

Reason


"When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts and what is the truth the facts bear out?" (BBC Interview, 1959)

"Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one." (Our Knowledge of the External World, 1914)

"In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout the year. There are in the law a splendor and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details." (On History, 1904)

Mathematics


"Starting with premises which would be universally admitted to belong to logic and arriving by deduction at results which as obviously belong to mathematics, we find that there is no point at which a sharp line can be drawn, with logic to the left and mathematics to the right." (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1919)

"The fact that all mathematics is symbolic logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consist in the analysis of symbolic logic itself." (Principles of Mathematics, 1903)

"Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." (Mathematics and the Metaphysicians, 1917)

William James and the philosophy of thought


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William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist best known for his contributions to Pragmatism. Philosopher George Santayana said,
"Philosophy to [James] was rather like a maze in which he happened to find himself wandering, an what he was looking for was the way out." (Character and Opinion in the United States, 1920)
Biologist Francis Crick said,
"In his monumental work, The Principles f Psychology... he described five properties of what he called 'thought'. Every thought, he wrote, tends to be part of personal consciousness. Thought is always changing, is sensibly continuous, and appears to deal with objects independent of itself." (Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for Soul, 1994)
The rest of this post is some quotes from James.

Reason


"The most violent revolutions in an individual's belief leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched." (What Pragmatism Means, Lectures at the Lowell Institute and Columbia University)

"Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation..." (The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1897)

"The bigger the unit of deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed." (Letter to Henry Whitman, 1899)

"No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshadowed bird's eye view of the perspective of events." (A Pluralistic Universe, 1909)

"Reduced to their most pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes." (A Pluralistic Universe, 1909)

Consciousness


"There is but one indefectible certain truth, an that is the truth that Pyrrhonistic skepticism itself leaves standing - the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists." (The Will to Believe, 1897)

"Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits... a 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life." (The Principles of Psychology, 1890)

"As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of out consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of it's parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alteration of flights and perching." (The Principles of Psychology, 1890)

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Charles Sanders Peirce and consciousness


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Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a philosopher and psychologist who is often regarded as the 'father of pragmatism'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says,
"Peirce held that the continuity of space, time, ideation, feeling, and perception is an irreducible deliverance of science, and that an adequate conception of the continuous is an extremely important part of all the sciences."
The rest of this post is some quotes from Peirce.

Signs


"By 'semiosis', I mean... an action or influence, which is or involves, a cooperation of 3 subjects such as a sign, its object and its interpretant..." (Pragmatism, 1907)

"The entire universe is perfused with signs if it is not composed exclusively of signs." (Quoted in Essays in Zoosemiotics by Thomas Sebeok)

"The index asserts nothing; it only says 'there!'. It takes hold of our eyes as it were and forcibly directs them to a particular object and there it stops." (On the Algebra of Logic, 1885)

"Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for." (The Architecture of Theories, 1891)

"The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalization." (The Architecture of Theories, 1891)

"All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite." (Collected Papers, 1931-1958 posthumous)

Consciousness


"Consciousness must essentially cover an interval of time; for if it did not we could gain no knowledge of time and not merely no veracious cognition of it, but no conception whatever." (The Law of Mind, 1892)

"...instantaneous feelings flow together in a continuum of feeling, which has in a modified degree the peculiar vivacity of feeling and has gained generality." (The Law of Mind, 1892)

"Qualities of feelings show myriad-fold variety, far beyond what the psychologists admit." (Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, 1903)

"The recognition by one person of another's personality takes place by means to some extent identical to the means by which they are conscious of their own personality." (The Law of Mind, 1892)

Reason


"An 'argument' is any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief. An 'argumentation' is an argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premises." (A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God, 1908)

Carl Jung and subconscious


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Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a psychologist best known for his analysis of dreams and symbols. Writer Colin Wilson said,
"For Jung, the 'psychic world' (i.e. the world of the mind) was an independent reality, and it was possible to travel there and make the acquaintance of its inhabitants." (Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision, 1985)
Historian Lewis Mumford said,
"Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals." (Interpretations and Forecasts, 1967)
The rest of this post is some quotes from Jung.

Subconscious


"Because there are innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend." (Man and His Symbols, 1964 posthumous)

"We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis..." (Quoted by J. B. Priestly in Times Literary Supplement)

"Every archetype is capable of endless development and differentiation." (Psychology and Alchemy, 1952)

Metaphysics


"We know as little of a supreme being of Matter. But there is little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality and experiential fact. We only don't understand it." (Letter to Morton Kelsey, 1958)

"For lack of empirical data, I have neither knowledge nor understanding of such forms of being, which are commonly called spiritual... Nevertheless, we have good reason to suppose that behind this veil there exists the uncomprehended absolute object which affects and influences us..." (Memories, Dreams and Reflections, 1963 posthumous)

Knowledge


"Man, as we realize if we reflect for a moment, never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely." (Man and His Symbols, 1964 posthumous)

"Every interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text." (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933)

Ludwig Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language


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Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a philosopher best known for his analysis of language. Philosopher Bertrand Russell said,
"[Wittgenstein] is very excitable: he has more passion about philosophy than I have; his avalanches make mine seem mere snowballs. He has the pure intellectual passion in the highest degree; it makes me love him. His disposition is that of an artist, intuitive and moody." (Quoted in Young Wittgenstein by Brian McGuinness)
Anthropologist Peter Farb said,
"This inseparabeness of everything in the world from language has intrigued modern thinkers, most notably Ludwig Wittgenstein... If its limits - that is, the precise point at which sense becomes nonsense - could somehow be defined, then speakers would not attempt to express the inexpressible. Therefore, said Wittgenstein, do not put too great a burden upon language." (Word Play, 1974)
The rest of this post is some quotes form Wittgenstein.

Reason


"Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one." (Notebooks, 1914-1916)

"The child learns to believe a host of things, i.e. it learns to act according to those beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, an in that system , some things stand unshakably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it." (On Certainty, 1969 posthumous)

"What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions." (On Certainty, 1969 posthumous)

"To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth." (Philosophical Occasions, 1993 posthumous)

"If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained." (Culture and Value, 1980 posthumous)

Language


"For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules; it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules either." (The Blue Book, posthumous 1958)

"Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of imagination." (Philosophical Investigations, 1953 posthumous)

"The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him understand the usage of the general term." (The Blue Book, 1965 posthumous)

"Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries." (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922)

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

History of economic thought: economists


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Photo license: CC BY 2.0

This post is a collection of Wikipedia quotes about economists. There are 255 economists listed below, ordered chronologically. This post was originally posted in February 2017. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Ancient History


Fan Li (6th century BC)
"Fan Li was an adviser to King Goujian of Yue, wrote on economic issues and developed a set of 'golden' business rules." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Xenophon (430-360 BC)
"Xenophon's Oeconomicus is a dialogue principally about household management and agriculture." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Plato (424-348 BC)
"Plato's dialogue The Republic describing an ideal city-state run by philosopher-kings contained references to specialization of labor and to production." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Aristotle (384-322 BC)
"Though Aristotle did certainly advocate holding many things in common, he argued that not everything could be, simply because of the 'wickedness of human nature'." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Chanakya (4th century BC)
"Chanakya's Arthashastra discusses monetary and fiscal policies, welfare, international relations, and war strategies in detail." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Year 0


Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
"...Aquinas dealt with the concept of a just price, which he considered necessary for the the production of the social order. Similar in many ways to the modern concept of long run equilibrium, a just price was just sufficient to cover the costs of production, including the maintenance of a worker and his family." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

John Duns (1265-1308)
"[Duns] thought it possible to be more precise than Aquinas in calculating a just price, emphasizing the costs of labor and expenses, although he recognized that the latter might be inflated by exaggeration because buyer and seller usually have different ideas of a just price. If people did not benefit from a transaction, in Duns' view, they would not trade." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Jean Buridan (1300-1358)
"Buridan looked at money from two angles: its metal value and its purchasing power, which he acknowledged can vary. He argued that aggregated, not individual, demand and supply determine market prices." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Nicolas Oresme (1320-1382)
"Oresme wrote one of the earliest manuscripts devoted to an economic matter and brings an interesting insight on the medieval conception of money." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
"Khaldun expressed a theory of the lifecycle of civilizations, the specialization of labor, and the value of money as a means of exchange rather than as a store of inherent value." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Antoninus of Florence (1389-1459)
"Antoninus' writings social and economic development and argued in the them that the state had a duty to intervene in mercantile affairs for the common good, and the obligation to help the poor and need." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1553)
"[Copernicus] ...formulated an early iteration of the theory of money, now called Gresham's law that 'bad' (debased) coinage drives 'good' (un-debased) coinage out of circulation - several decades before Thomas Gresham." (Wikipedia: Nicolas Copernicus, 8.21.21 UTC 08:31)

Thomas More (1478-1535)
"More published Utopia, which describes an ideal society where land is owned in common and there is universal education and religious tolerance, inspiring the English Poor Laws and the communism-socialism movement." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546)
"Vitoria is the founder of the tradition in philosophy know as the School of Salamanca, noted especially for his contributions to the theory of just war and international law." (Wikipedia: Francisco de Vitoria, 6.3.21 UTC 13:08)

1500


Jean Bodin (1530-1546)
"Bodin offered one of the earliest scholarly analyses of the phenomenon of inflation, unknown prior to the 16th century...  Analyzing the phenomenon, amongst other factors, he pointed to the relationship between the amount of goods and the amount of money in circulation." (Wikipedia: Jean Bodin, 8.14.21 UTC 08:24)

Barthelemy de Laffemas (1545-1612)
"[Laffemas] advocated mercantilism and encouraged the development of trade and manufacturing... He had a great influence in the areas of labor, economic and social organization and had a leading role in the history of silk in Europe... He is known as the first person to write about underconsumption." (Wikipedia: Barthelemy de Laffemas, 5.21.21 UTC 06:59)

Leonardus Lessius (1554-1623)
"[Lessius'] experience gave weight to his ethical solutions to moral cases dealing with business and finance. He has been praised by modern historians of economics for the subtlety of its understanding of business matters involving interest. For example, Lessius clearly states the  dependence of the price of an insurance contract on the risk the event insured against." (Wikipedia: Leonardus Lessius, 7.4.21 UTC 11:18)

Thomas Mun (1571-1641)
"Through mercantilist principles, Mun created a proposed set of 'means to enrich a kingdom' which centered on ensuring that exports exceeded import. In other words, Mun advocated for achieving a positive balance of trade which would cause England's wealth to steadily increase." (Wikipedia: Thomas Mun, 7.14.21 UTC 15:02)

Gerard Malynes (1586-1641)
"Malynes showed how an outflow of precious metals could lead to a fall in prices at home and a rise in prices abroad. He suggested that high import tariffs should be levied and exports of bullion prohibited, because he believed that a country's growth was related to the accumulation of precious metals." (Wikipedia: Gerard Malynes, 6.30.21 UTC 08:59)

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
"In the Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments and creating an objective science of morality. Much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war." (Wikipedia: Thomas Hobbes, 8.14.21 UTC 10:17)

1600


Edward Misselden (1608-1654)
"Misselden argued that international movements of money and fluctuations in the exchange rates depended upon the international trade flows and not the manipulations of the bakers, which was the popular view at the time. He suggested that trading returns should be established for purposes of statistical analysis, so that the state could regulate trade with a view to obtaining export surpluses." (Wikipedia: Edward Misselden, 5.14.17 UTC 20:40)

Jean-Baptiste Cobert (1619-1683)
"[Colbert] worked to develop the domestic economy by raising tariffs and by encouraging major public works projects. Colbert also worked to ensure that the French East India Company had access to foreign markets, so that they could always obtain coffee, cotton, dyewoods, fur, pepper and sugar." (Wikipedia: Jean-Baptiste Cobert, 8.5.21 UTC 12:21)

William Petty (1623-1687)
"Petty is best known for economic history and statistic writings, before Adam Smith. Of particular interest were Petty's forays into statistical analysis. Petty's work in political arithmetic, along with the work of John Graunt, laid the foundation for modern census techniques." (Wikipedia: William Petty, 8.5.21 UTC 12:21)

John Locke (1623-1704)
"Locke developed a labor theory of property, namely that ownership of property is created by the application of labor. In addition, he believed that property precedes government and government cannot 'dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily'." (Wikipedia: John Locke, 8.14.21 UTC 10:58)

Philipp von Hornigk (1640-1712)
"[Hornigk] wrote in a time when his country was constantly threatened by Turkish invasion. In 'Oesterreich uber allles, wann es nur will' ('Austria Over All, If She Only Will') he laid out one of the clearest statements of mercantile policy... He listed nine principles of national economy." (Wikipedia: Philipp von Hornigk, 12.25.20 UTC 12:34)

Dudley North (1641-1691)
"...North shows that wealth may exist independently of gold or silver, its source being human industry, applied either to the cultivation of the soil or to manufactures. It is a mistake to suppose that stagnation of trade arises from want of money; it must arise either from a glut of the home market, or from a disturbance of foreign commerce, or form diminished consumption, caused by poverty." (Wikipedia: Dudley North, 6.6.20 UTC 11:42)

Pierre le Pesant (1646-1714)
"[Pesant] drew a picture of the general ruin of all classes of Frenchmen, caused by the bad economic regime. In opposition to Colbert's mercantilist views he held that the wealth of a country consists, not in the abundance of money which it possesses but in what it produces and exchanges." (Wikipedia: Pierre le Pesant, 11.10.19 UTC 19:42)

Charles Davenant (1656-1714)
"...[Davenant had] strong objections to long-term borrowing as a way to fund government expenditures and advocated paying back the debt incurred during the war as soon as possible. The basis for Davenant's argument was that 'high taxation for debt service was a burden on trade, industry and land." (Wikipedia: Charles Davenant, 7.15.21 UTC 08:47)

Richard Cantillon (1680-1734)
"Essai is considered the first complete treatise on economics, with numerous contributions to the science. These contributions include: his cause and effect methodology, monetary theories, his conception of the entrepreneur as a risk-bearer, and the development of spatial economics." (Wikipedia: Richard Cantillon, 7.9.21 UTC 00:57))

Francois Quesnay (1694-1774)
"[Quesnay] is known for publishing the Tableau economique (Economic Table) in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats. This was perhaps the first work attempting to describe the workings of the economy in a analytical way, and as such can be viewed as one of the first important contributions to economic thought." (Wikipedia: Francois Quesnay, 7.10.21 UTC 05:56)

Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746)
"[Hutcheson] is remembered for his book A System of Moral Philosophy... During his time as a lecturer in Glasgow College taught and influenced Adam Smith, the economist and philosopher... " (Wikipedia: Francis Hutcheson, 8.14.21 UTC 10:20)

1700


David Hume (1711-1776)
"Hume, in contrast to Locke, believed that private property is not a natural right. Hume argues it is justified because resources are limited. Private property would be an unjustified 'idle ceremonial' if all goods were unlimited and available freely. Hume also believed in an unequal distribution of property, because perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry. Perfect equality would thus lead to impoverishment." (Wikipedia: David Hume, 8.14.21 UTC 23:43)

Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759)
"Some historians of economics believe that [Gournay] coined the phrase laissez faire, laissez passer... Together with Francois Quesnay... he was a leader of the Physiocratic School." (Wikipedia: Jacques Clade Marie Vincent de Gournay, 5.4.21 UTC 05:22)

James Steuart (1713-1780)
"In 1767, Steuart published An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy... The book was the most complete and systematic survey of the science from the point of view of moderate mercantilism which had appeared in England and indeed the first full-fledged economics treatise to appear anywhere." (Wikipedia: James Steuart, 8.17.21 UTC 00:25)

Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau (1715-1789)
"...the term 'mercantilism' was not coined until 1763, by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau and popularized by Adam Smith in 1776, who vigorously opposed it. (Wikipedia: History of Economic Thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Adam Smith (1723-1790)
"Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. He developed the concept of division of labour, and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity." (Wikipedia: Adam Smith, 822.21 UTC 11:37)

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781)
"[Turgot] is thought to be the first economist to have recognized the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture." (Wikipedia: Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, 7.26.21 UTC 02:28)

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"Burke criticized policies such as maximum prices and state regulation of wages, and set out what the limits of government should be... The economist Adam Smith remarked that Burke was the 'only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us." (Wikipedia: Edmund Burke, 8.16.21 UTC 19:01)

William Hershel (1738-1822)
"In 1801, Herschel reported his findings to the Royal Society and indicated five prolonged periods of few sunspots correlated with the price of wheat." (Wikipedia: William Herschel, 8.15.21 UTC 12:30)

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or 'dimension' such as intensity, duration and certainty of a pleasure or pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximization principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics." (Wikipedia: Jeremy Bentham, 8.21.21 UTC 06:12)

William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806)
"William Pitt the Younger, Tory Prime Minister from 1783-1801 based his tax proposals on Smith's ideas, and advocated free trade as a devout disciple of The Wealth of Nations." (Wikipedia: History of economic thought, 8.17.21 UTC 02:17)

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)
"...Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level." (Wikipedia: Thomas Robert Malthus, 8.4.21 UTC 13:52)

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832)
"Say was a liberal French economist and businessman who argued in favor of competition, free trade, and lifting restraints on business. He is best known for Say's Law... often summarized as 'aggregate supply creates its own aggregate demand'." (Wikipedia: Jean-Baptiste Say, 3.4.21 UTC 15:51)

David Ricardo (1772-1823)
"Ricardo challenged the idea that the purpose of trade was merely to accumulate gold or silver. With 'comparative advantage' Ricardo argued in favor of industry specialization and free trade. He suggested that industry specialization combined with free international trade always produces positive results. This theory expanded on the concept of absolute advantage." (Wikipedia: David Ricardo, 8.17.21 UTC 10:06)

1800


John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
"Mill's early economic philosophy was on of free markets. However, he accepted interventions in the economy, such as a tax on alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds... Mill's Principles, first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all the books of the period." (Wikipedia: John Stuart Mill, 8.18. 21 UTC 11:14)

Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894)
"Roscher tried to establish the laws of economic development by using the historical method from the investigation of histories of legal, political, cultural and other aspects... Roscher developed a cyclical theory where nations and their economies pass through youth, manhood and decay..." (Wikipedia: Wilhelm Roscher, 4.14.21 UTC 05:40)

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
"Marx's critical theories about society, economics and politics - collectively understood as Marxism - hold that human societies develop through class struggle; in capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labor for wages." (Wikipedia: Karl Marx, 8.21.21 UTC 07:50)

Clement Juglar (1819-1905)
"[Juglar] was one of the first to develop an economic theory of business cycles. He identified the fixed investment cycle of seven to eleven years that is now associated with his name. Within the Juglar cycle on can observe oscillations of investments into fixed capital and not just changes in the level of employment of the fixed capital (and respective changes in inventories), as is observed with respect to Kitchin cycles." (Wikipedia: Clement Juglar, 12.31.20 UTC 05:00)

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
"In 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in English cities. In 1848, Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx, and also authored an co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works." (Wikipedia: Friedrich Engels, 8.10.21 UTC 17:41)

Leon Walras (1834-1910)
"Walras constructed his basic theory of general equilibrium by beginning with simple equations an then increasing the complexity in the next equations. He began with a two-person bartering system, then moved on to the derivation of downward-sloping consumer demands. Next he moved on to exchanges involving multiple parties, and finally ended with credit and money." (Wikipedia: Leon Walras, 8.4.21 UTC 05:14)

William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882)
"[Jevons'] theory of utility referred to, namely, that the degree of utility of a commodity is some continuous mathematical function of the quantity of the commodity available, together with the implied doctrine that economics is essentially a mathematical science, took more definite form in a paper on A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy" (Wikipedia: William Stanley Jevons, 7.12.21 UTC 23:23)

Alexander de Mar (1836-1926)
"Del Mar was a rigorous historian who made important contributions to the history of money. During the mid-1890s, he was distinctly hostile to a central monetary role for gold as a commodity money, championing the cause of silver and its re-monetization as a prerogative of the state." (Wikipedia: Alexander de Mar, 4.7.21 UTC 00:30)

Carl Menger (1840-1921)
"Menger was the founder of the Austrian School of economics... Menger used his 'subjective theory of value' to arrive at what he considered one of the most powerful insights in economics: both sides gain from exchange." (Wikipedia: Carl Menger, 8.10.21 UTC 07:36)

Alfred Marshall (1842-1926)
"[Marshall's] book, Principles of Economics in 1890, was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years. It brings the ideas of supply and demand, marginal utility, and costs of production in to a coherent whole. He is known as one of the founders of neoclassical economics... Although Marshall took economics to a more mathematically rigorous level, he did not want mathematics to overshadow economics and thus make economics irrelevant to the layman." (Wikipedia: Alfred Marshall, 8.7.21 UTC 08:27)

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845-1926)
"[Edgeworth] was the first to apply certain formal mathematical techniques to individual decision making in economics. He developed utility theory, introducing the indifference curve and the famous Edgeworth box, which is now familiar to undergraduate students of microeconomics." (Wikipedia: Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, 2.15.21 UTC 12:44)

John Bates Clark (1847-1938)
"[Clark] was one of the pioneers of the marginalist revolution and opponent to the Institutionalist school of economics... In The Philosophy of Wealth (1886)... he formulated an original version of marginal utility theory, a principle already published by Jevons in 1871, Menger in 1871 and Walras in 1878." (Wikipedia: John Bates Clark, 11.13.20 UTC 19:31)

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923)
"[Pareto] introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He was also the first to discover that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power law probability distribution. The Pareto principle was named after him, and it was built on observations of his such as that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by about 20% of the population." (Wikipedia: Vilfredo Pareto, 7.29.21 UTC 00:30)

Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926)
"Wieser is renowned for two main works, Natural Value (1889) which carefully details the alternative-cost doctrine and the theory of imputation, and his Social Economics (1914) is an ambitious attempt to apply it to the real world. His explanation of marginal utility theory was decisive, at least terminologically: it was his term 'Grenznutzen' (building on von Thunen's 'grenzkosten') that developed into the standard term, 'marginal utility', not Jevons' final degree of utility' or Menger's 'value'." (Wikipedia: Friedrich von Wieser, 8.10.21 UTC 17:42)

Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (1851-1914)
"[Bohm-Bawerk's] first volume of Capital and Interest, which Ludwig von Mises decreed as 'the most eminent contribution to modern economic theory', titled History and Critique of Interest Theories (1884), is an exhaustive study of the alternative treatments of interest: use theories, productivity theories, abstinence theories, and so on." (Wikipedia: Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, 8.2.21 UTC 17:02)

Knut Wicksell (1851-1926)
"Wicksell's most influential contribution was his theory of interest... Wicksell invented the key term 'natural rate of interest' and defined it as the interest rate which is compatible with stable price level. If the interest rate falls short of the natural rate, inflation is likely to arise; if the interest rate exceeds the natural rate, this will tend to produce deflation. An interest rate that coincides with the natural rate ensures equilibrium in the commodity market and produces price level stability." (Wikipedia: Knut Wicksell, 2.27.21 UTC 23:03)

Richard Ely (1854-1943)
"Ely was leader of the Progressive movement who called for more government intervention in order to reform what they perceived as the injustices of capitalism, especially regarding factory conditions, compulsory education, child labor and labor unions... Ely is best remembered as a founder and the first Secretary of the American Economic Association..." (Wikipedia: Richard Ely, 6.24.21 UTC 14:53)

Karl Kautsky (1854-1938)
"[Kautsky] discussed Bolshevist rule in Russia. He saw the Bolsheviks (or Communists) as a conspiratorial organization that had gained power by a coup and initiated revolutionary changes for which there was no economic rationale in Russia." (Wikipedia: Karl Kautsky, 8.19.21 UTC 23:19)

Fred M. Taylor (1855-1932)
"[Taylor's] Principles of Economics went through 9 editions. Of a libertarian ideology, he was noted as a clear and rigorous expositor of economic theory in the partial-equilibrium lineage of Alfred Marshall." (Wikipedia: Fred M. Taylor, 4.7.21 UTC 18:15)

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)
"Veblen laid the foundation for the perspective of institutional economics with his criticism of traditional static economic theory. As much as Veblen was a n economists, he was also a sociologist who rejected his contemporaries who looked at the economy as an autonomous stable and static entity." (Wikipedia: Thorstein Veblen, 8.15.21 UTC 17:07)

Beatrice Webb (1858-1943)
"[Webb] was also among the founders of the London School of Economics and played a crucial role in forming the Fabian Society... Webb also coined the term 'collective bargaining'." (Wikipedia: Beatrice Webb, 7.4.21 UTC 12:53)

John Hobson (1858-1940)
"[Hobson developed]... a critique of the classical theory of rent and his proposed generalization anticipated the Neoclassical 'marginal productivity' theory of distribution." (Wikipedia: John Hobson, 8.13.21 UTC 08:56)

Sidney Webb (1859-1947)
"Webb was co-founder of the London School of Economics... [and] one of the early members of the Fabian Society in 1884... Webb co-authored with his wife [Beatrice Webb], The History of Trade Unionism (1894)" (Wikipedia: Sidney Webb, 8.17.21 UTC 17:24)

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
"In Steiner's chief book on social reform, Toward Social Renewal, he suggested that the cultural political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities, each with a particular task: political institutions should establish political equality and protect human rights; cultural institutions should nurture the free and unhindered development of science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should enable producers, distributors and consumers to cooperated to provide efficiently for society's needs." (Wikipedia: Rudolf Steiner, 8.16.21 UTC 21:28)

Silvio Gesell (1862-1930)
"Gesell called for free, fair business competition with equal chances for all. This included the removal of all legal and inherited privileges. Everyone should rely only on his personal abilities in order to make a living. In the 'natural economic order' which he recommended, the most talented people would have the greatest income, without distortion by interest and rent charges." (Wikipedia: Silvio Gesell, 6.4.21 UTC 21:13)

John R. Commons (1862-1945)
"In 1934, Commons published Institutional Economics, which laid out his view that institutions were made up of collective actions that, along with conflict of interests, defined the economy. He believed that institutional economics added collective control of individual transactions to existing economic theory." (Wikipedia: John R. Commons, 7.22.21 UTC 22:29)

Alfred Mitchell-Innes (1864-1950)
"[Mitchell-Innes] wrote two articles on money and credit for The Banking Law Journal. The first, What is Money?, received an approving review from John Maynard Keynes, which led to the publication of the second, Credit Theory of Money." (Wikipedia: Alfred Mitchell-Innes, 5.30.21 UTC 01:48)

Max Weber (1864-1920)
"[Weber's] research interests were always in line with those of the German historicists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, but Weber's defense of methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School of economics..." (Wikipedia: Max Weber, 8.5.21 UTC 09:31)

Irving Fisher (1867-1947)
"[Fisher] was a pioneer in the rigorous study of intertemporal choice in markets which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates. His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as 'monetarism'. Fisher was also a pioneer of econometrics, including the development of index numbers." (Wikipedia: Irving Fisher, 5.28.21 UTC 00:59)

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924)
"Lenin was a devout Marxist, and believed that his interpretation of Marxism. first termed 'Leninism' by Martov in 1904, was the sole authentic and orthodox one. According to his Marxist perspective, humanity would eventually reach pure communism, becoming a stateless, classless, equalitatiran society of workers who were free from exploitation and alienation..." (Wikipedia: Vladimir Lenin, 8.16.21 UTC 02:59)

Rosa Luxembourg (1871-1919)
"[Luxembourg's] Dialectic of Spontaneity and Organization was the central feature of her political philosophy, wherein 'spontaneity' is a grassroots approach to organizing a party-oriented class struggle. She argued that spontaneity and organization, are not separable or separate activities, but different moments of one political process; one does not exist without the other." (Wikipedia: Rosa Luxembourg, 8.21.21 UTC 00:17)

Arthur Pigou (1877-1959)

"Pigou's most enduring contribution was the The Economics of Welfare in 1920, in which he introduced the concept of externality and the idea that externality problems could be corrected by the imposition of a Pigovian tax... The externality concept remains central to modern welfare economics and particularly to environmental economics." (Wikipedia: Arthur Cecil Pigou, 7.29.21 UTC 00:27)

Eli Heckscher (1879-1952)
"Heckscher is best known for a model explaining patterns in international trade (Heckscher-Ohlin model) that he developed with Bertil Ohlin at the Stockholm School of Economics." (Wikipedia: Eli Heckscher, 7.25.21 UTC 17:01)

Richard Tawney (1880-1962)
"[Tawney's] Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) was his classic work and made his reputation as a historian. It explored the relationship between Protestantism and economic development in the 16th and 17th centuries." (Wikipedia: Richard Tawney, 8.8.21 UTC 15:38)

Walton Hale Hamilton (1881-1958)
"In 1919, Hamilton coined the term 'institutional economics'... Hamilton undertook a series of industry studies that sought to show that wages and prices were not set by market forces as understood by neoclassical economists but instead depended on social and historical contexts, so that the results were noncompetitive wages and prices." (Wikipedia: Walton Hale Hamilton, 12.28.20 UTC 16:29)

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
"Misses wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism. In his magnum opus Human Action, Mises adopted praxeology as a general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and set forth his methodological approach to economics." (Wikipedia: Ludwig von Mises, 8.14.21 UTC 22:36)

Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950)
"Schumpeter was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, popularizing the term 'creative destruction' in economic', which was coined by Werner Sombart... Schumpeter identified innovation as the critical dimension of economic change. He argued that economic change revolves around innovation, entrepreneurial activities and market power." (Wikipedia: Joseph Schumpeter, 8.15.21 UTC 19:35)

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
"Keynes advocated the use of fiscal and monetary polices to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. He detailed these ideas in his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936." (Wikipedia: John Maynard Keynes, 8.19.21 UTC 11:34)

Frank Knight (1885-1972)
"Knight is best known as the author of the book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921)... Knight argued that uncertainty gave rise to economic profits that perfect competition could not eliminate." (Wikipedia: Frank Knight, 8.16.21 UTC 03:11)

Karl Polanyi (1886-1964)
"Polanyi is remembered best as the originator of 'substantivism', a cultural approach to economics, which emphasized the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This view ran counter to mainstream economics but is popular in anthropology, economic history, economic sociology and political science." (Wikipedia: Karl Polanyi, 8.18.21 UTC 23:22)

Clarence Edwin Ayres (1891-1972)
"Ayres was the principal thinker in the Texas school of Institutional Economics, during the middle of the 20th century... Ayers is best known for developing an economic philosophy stemming from the works of Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey." (Wikipedia: Clarence Edwin Ayres, 6.23.21 UTC 05:52)

Nikolai Kondratiev (1892-1938)
"Kondratiev... promoted the New Economic Policy's (NEP) system of small private, free market enterprises int he Soviet Union. Kondratiev's theory that Western capitalist economies have long term (50 to 60 years) cycles of boom followed by depression gained recognition inside an outside of the Soviet Union..." (Wikipedia: Nikolai Kondratiev, 7.30.21 UTC 14:33)

Jacob Viner (1892-1970)
"Known for his enduring economic modeling of the firm, including the long and short run cost curves, his work is still used today... Viner is further known for having added the terms 'trade creation' and 'trade diversion' to the canon of economics in 1950. He also made important contributions to the theory of international trade..." (Wikipedia: Jacob Viner, 7.27.21 UTC 01:41)

Ragnar Frisch (1895-1973)
"Frisch was one of the founders of economics as a modern science. He made a number of significant advances in the field of economics and coined a number of new words including 'econometrics' and 'macroeconomics'." (Wikipedia: Ragnar Frisch, 8.12.21 UTC 22:44)

Holbrook Working (1895-1985)
"[Working is] known for his contributions on hedging, on the theory of futures prices, on an early theory of market maker behavior, and on the theory of storage (including the 'Working curve' which plots the difference between short term and long term grain futures prices against current inventory)." (Wikipedia: Holbrook Working, 6.15.21 UTC 14:37)

Adolf Berle (1895-1971)
"Berle and Means showed that the means of production in the U.S. economy were highly concentrated in the hands of the largest 200 corporations, and within the large corporations, managers controlled firms despite shareholders' formal ownership." (Wikipedia: Adolf Berle, 7.20.21 UTC 01:43)

Gardiner Means (1896-1988)
"Means followed the institutionalist tradition of economists. In 1934 he coined term 'administered prices' to refer to prices set by firms in monopoly positions... Means argued that where an economy is fueled by big firms, it is the interests of management, not the public, that govern society." (Wikipedia: Gardiner Means, 2.20.21 UTC 08:36)

Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987)
"Myrdal headed a comprehensive study of sociological, economic, anthropological and legal data on race relations in the United States funded by the Carnegie Corporation, starting in 1938. The result of the effort was Myrdal's best known work, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, published in 1944, written with the collaboration of R. M. E. Sterner and Arnold Rose." (Wikipedia: Gunnar Myrdal, 7.13.21 UTC 02:48)

Piero Sraffa (1898-1983)
"[Sraffa's] Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities is taken as founding the neo-Ricardian school of economics... He aimed to demonstrate flaws in the mainstream neoclassical theory of value and develop an alternative analysis... Sraffa's technique of aggregating capital as 'dated inputs of labor' led to a famous scholarly debate know as the Cambridge capital controversy." (Wikipedia: Piero Sraffa, 5.21.21 UTC 17:21)

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)
"[Hayek's] account of how changing prices communicated information which enables individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics..." (Wikipedia: Friedrich Hayek, 8.19.21 UTC 01:07)

Edward Chamberlin (1899-1967)
"Chamberlin coined the term 'product differentiation' to describe how a supplier may be able to charge a greater amount for a product than perfect competition would allow... His most significant contribution was the Chamberlinian monopoloistic competition theory." (Wikipedia: Edward Chamberlin, 5.17.21 UTC 15:39)

Michael Kalecki (1899-1970)
"[Kalecki] offered a synthesis that integrated Marxist class analysis and the then-new literature on oligopoly theory, and his work had a significant influence on both the neo-Marxian... and post-Keynesian schools of economic thought." (Wikipedia: Michael Kalecki, 8.17.21 UTC 05:05)

Bertil Ohlin (1899-1979)
"Ohlin... built an economic theory of international trade from earlier work by Heckscher and his own doctoral thesis. It is now known as the Heckscher-Ohlin model, one of the stand model economists use to debate trad theory." (Wikipedia: Bertil Ohlin, 6.6.21 UTC 15:54)

Henry Calvert Simons (1899-1946)
"Simons argued for changing the financial architecture of the United States to make monetary policy more effective and mitigate periodic cycles of inflation and deflation. The goal of changing the 'monetary rules of the game' in this way was to 'prevent... the affliction of extreme industrial fluctuations'." (Wikipedia: Henry Calvert Simons, 6.13.21 UTC 07:55)

1900


Roy Harrod (1900-1978)
"[Harrod] is best known for writing The Life of John Maynard Keynes in 1951, and for the development of the Harrod-Domar model, which he and Evsey Domar developed independently." (Wikipedia: Roy Harrod, 8.15.21 UTC 14:32)

Maurice Dobb (1900-1976)
"Dobb was primarily involved in interpreting of neoclassical economic theory from a Marxist point of view. His involvement int he original economic calculation problem debate consisted of critiques of capitalist, centrally planed socialist, or market socialist models that were based upon the neoclassical framewok of static equilibrium." (Wikipedia: Maurice Dobb, 8.1.21 UTC 02:46)

Raul Prebisch (1901-1986)
"Prebisch... reexamined the principle of comparative advantage described by David Ricardo, marking the creation of a new school of economic thought in the late 1940s. Prebisch separated out the purely theoretical aspects of economics from the actual practice of trade and the power structures that underlie trading institutions and agreements." (Wikipedia: Raul Prebisch, 6.27.21 UTC 07:30)

Oskar Morgenstern (1902-1977)
"[Morgenstern], in collaboration with mathematician John von Neumann, founded the mathematical field of game theory and its application to economics." (Wikipedia: Oskar Morgenstern, 8.4.21 UTC 13:04)

Theodore Schultz (1902-1998)
"[Schultz]... led research into why post-World War II Germany and Japan recovered, at almost miraculous speeds from the widespread devastation. Contrast this with the United Kingdom which was still rationing food long after the war. His conclusion was that the speed of recovery was due to a healthy and highly educated population." (Wikipedia: Theodore Schultz, 5.19.21 UTC 20:30)

John von Neumann (1903-1957)
"[Von Neumann] was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, in the development of functional analysis, and a key figure in the development of game theory and the concepts of cellular automata, the universal constructor and the digital computer." (Wikipedia: John von Neumann, 8.20.21 UTC 11:31)

Abba Lerner (1903-1982)
"Lerner developed a model of market socialism, which featured decentralized market pricing proportional to marginal social cost, and in so doing contributed to the Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem." (Wikipedia: Abba P. Lerner, 5.27.21 UTC 17:58)

Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994)
"Tinbergen developed the first national comprehensive macroeconomic model, which he first developed in 1936 for the Netherlands, and later applied to the United States and the United Kingdom." (Wikipedia: Jan Tinbergen, 7.10.21 UTC 21:33)

Joan Robinson (1903-1983)
"[Robinson]... coined the term 'monopsony' which is used to describe the buyer converse of a seller monopoly. Monosony is commonly applied to buyers of labor, where the employer has wage setting power that allows it to exercise Pigovian exploitation and pay workers less than their marginal productivity." (Wikipedia: Joan Robinson, 8.15.21 UTC 11:36)

Francois Perroux (1903-1987)
"Perroux was terribly critical of the leading financial and economic policies toward the Third World during his career. He said that they took insufficient account of the originality, culture, and concrete situations of the countries concerned, and were too quantitative, too Western in concept, and too centered on the interests of the rich industrialized countries." (Wikipedia: Francois Perroux, 5.4.21 UTC 10:37)

G. L. S. Shackle (1903-1992)
"[Shackle] made a practical attempt to challenge classical rational choice theory and has been characterized as 'post-Keynesian', though he is influenced as well by Austrian economics." (Wikipedia: G. L. S. Shackle, 7.12.21 UTC 06:52)

Oskar Lange (1904-1965)
"Lange is best known for advocating the use of market pricing tools in socialist systems and providing a model of market socialism." (Wikipedia: Oskar Lange, 5.13.21 UTC 13:45)

John Hicks (1904-1989)
"The most familiar of [Hicks'] many contributions in the field of economics were his statement of consumer demand theory in microeconomics, and the IS/LM model (1937), which summarized a Keynesian view of macroeconomics. His book Value and Capital (1939) significantly extended general equilibrium and value theory." (Wikipedia: John Hicks, 5.3.21 UTC 22:01)

Baron Kahn (1905-1989)
"Kahn's most notable contribution to economics was his principle of the multiplier. The multiplier is the relation between the increase in aggregate expenditure and the increase in net national product (output). It is the increase in aggregate expenditure (for example government spending) that causes the increase in output (or income)." (Wikipedia: Baron Kahn, 1.30.21 UTC 13:51)

R. G. D. Allen (1906-1983)
"Allen introduced the concept of 'partial elasticity of substitution' to economics in his famous 1938 book, Mathematical Analysis for Economists." (Wikipedia: R. G. D. Allen, 6.18.21 UTC 19:05)

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994)
"[Georgescu-Roegen] is best known today for his 1971 magnum opus The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, where he argued that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. A progenitor and a paradigm founder in economics, Georgescu-Roegen's work was seminal in establishing ecological economics as an independent academic sub-discipline in economics." (Wikipedia: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 7.21.21 UTC 15:50)

Wassily Leontief (1906-1999)
"Leontief is credited with developing early contributions to input-output analysis... He has also made contributions in other areas of economics, such as international trade where he documented the Leontief paradox. He was also one of the first to establish the composite commodity theorem." (Wikipedia: Wassily Leontief, 7.15.21 UTC 22:40)

James Meade (1907-1995)
"The first volume The Balance of Payments stresses the fact that for each of its policy objectives, the government requires a policy tool. The second volume Trade and Welfare deals with conditions under which free trade makes a country better off and conditions under which it does not. Meade concluded that, contrary to previous beliefs, if a country was already protecting one of its markets from international competition, further protection of another market could be 'second best'." (Wikipedia: James Meade, 6.13.21 UTC 17:45)

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)
"[Galbraith's] books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual. As an economist, he leaned toward Post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective." (Wikipedia: John Kenneth Galbraith, 8.12.21 UTC 05:28)

Nicholas Kaldor (1908-1986)
"Kaldor, however, had actually invented a fully coherent and highly realistic account of the business cycle in 1940. He used non-linear dynamics to construct this theory. Kaldor's theory was similar to Samuelson's and Hicks' as it used a multiplier-accelerator model to understand the cycle. It differed from these theories, however, as Kaldor introduced the capital stock as an important determinant of the trade cycle." (Wikipedia: Nicholas Kaldor, 12.26.20 UTC 11:12)

Paul A. Baran (1909-1964)
"Baran introduced the concept of 'economic surplus' to deal with novel complexities raised by the dominance of monopoly capital. With Paul Sweezy, Baran elaborated the importance of this innovation, its consistency with Marx's labor concept of value, and supplementary relation to Marx's category of surplus value." (Wikipedia: Paul A. Baran, 8.13.21 UTC 08:51)

Ronald Coase (1910-2013)
"Coase believed economists should study real markets and not theoretical ones, established the case for the corporation as a means to pay the costs of operating a marketplace. Coase is best know for two articles in particular: The Nature of the Firm, which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms, and The Problem of Social Costs, which suggests that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities." (Wikipedia: Ronald Coase, 8.2.21 UTC 21:46)

Tjalling Koopmans (1910-1985)
"Koopmans was awarded the Nobel memorial prize (jointly with Leonid Kantorovich) for his contributions to the field of resource allocation, specially the theory of optimal use of resources."  (Wikipedia: Tjalling Koopmans, 7.15.21 UTC 04:24)

Karl William Kapp (1910-1976)
"[Kapp's] theory is in the tradition of various heterodox economic paradigms, such as ecological economics, Marxian economics, social economics and institutional economics... He was an opponent of the compartmentalization of knowledge in the social sciences in general." (Wikipedia: Karl William Kapp, 7.22.21 UTC 05:45)

Paul Sweezy (1910-2004)
"[Sweezy] wrote... The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), a book which summarized the labor theory of value of Marx and his followers." (Wikipedia: Paul Sweezy, 8.13.21 UTC 09:01)

Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993)
"Boulding was an exponent of the evolutionary economics movement. In his Economic Development as an Evolutionary System (1961, 1964), Boulding suggests a parallel between economic development and biological evolution." (Wikipedia: Kenneth E. Boulding, 3.25.21 UTC 18:38)

George Stigler (1911-1991)
"Stigler is best known for developing the 'Economic Theory of Regulation', also known as 'capture', which says that interest groups and other potential participants will use the regulatory and coercive powers of government to shape laws and regulations in a way that is beneficial to them." (Wikipedia: George Stigler, 7.27.21 UTC 22:40)

Marcus Fleming (1911-1976)
"At approximately the same time as Mundell, Fleming presented similar research on stabilization policy in open economics. As a result, today's textbooks refer to the Mundell-Fleming model." (Wikipedia: Marcus Fleming, 5.3.21 UTC 22:05)

Maurice Allais (1911-2010)
"[Allias] introduced the first overlapping generations model (OLG model)... introduced the golden rule of optimal growth before Trevor Swan and Edmund Phelps, and showed that an interest rate equal to the growth rate maximized consumptions... He was also responsible for early work in behavioral economics, which in the U.S. is generally attributed to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky." (Wikipedia: Maurice Allais, 6.30.21 UTC 21:22)

E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977)
"Schumacher... is best known for his proposals for human-scale, decentralized and appropriate technologies... His theories of development have been summed up in the catch-phrases 'intermediate size' and 'intermediate technology'. (Wikipedia: E. F. Schumacher, 7.29.21 UTC 18:56)

Trygve Haavelmo (1911-1999)
"Haavelmo acquired a prominent position in modern economics through this logical critique of a series of custom conceptions in mathematical analysis." (Wikipedia: Trygve Haavelmo, 7.10.21 UTC 01:31)

Leonid Kantorovich (1912-1986)
"Kantorovich... is known for his development of techniques for the optimal allocation of resources. He is regarded as the founder of linear programming." (Wikipedia: Leonid Kantorovich, 4.4.21 UTC 11:43)

Milton Friedman (1912-2006)
"Friedman promoted an alternative macroeconomic viewpoint known as 'Monetarism', and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy, as compared to rapid and unexpected changes... His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s." (Wikipedia: Milton Friedman, 8.21.21 UTC 05:24)

Richard Stone (1913-1991)
"Stone... [developed] an accounting model that could be used to track economic activities on a national and, later, an international scale... While he was not the first economists to work in this field, he was the first to do so with double entry accounting." (Wikipedia: Richard Stone, 7.13.21 UTC 03:44)

Louis Kelso (1913-1991)
"Kelso... is chiefly remembered today as the inventor and pioneer of the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), invented to enable working people without savings to buy stock in their employer company ad pay for it out of its future dividend yield." (Wikipedia: Louis Kelso, 12.30.21 UTC 21:02)

Abram Bergson (1914-2003)
"Bergson in a 1938 paper, defined and discussed the notion of an individualistic social welfare function. The paper delineated necessary marginal conditions for economic efficiency, relative to: real-valued ordinal utility functions of individuals (illustrated by indifference-curve maps) for commodities, labor supplied and other resource constraints." (Wikipedia: Abram Bergson, 8.20.21 UTC 17:11)

Henry Wallich (1914-1988)
"[Wallich] is best known as an economic columnist for Newsweek magazine, from 1965 until he join the Federal Reserve... Wallich's interests included developing country economies in the Third World." (Wikipedia: Henry Wallich, 4.29.21 UTC 07:24)

William Vickrey (1914-1996)
"Vickrey was the first to use the tools of game theory to explain the dynamics of auctions. In his seminal paper, Vickrey derived several auction equilibria, and provided an early revenue-equivalence result. The revenue equivalence theorem remains the centerpiece of modern auction theory. The Vickrey auction is name after him." (Wikipedia: William Vickrey, 12.27.20 UTC 05:10)

William Phillips (1914-1975)
"[Phillips'] best known contribution to economics is the Phillips curve, which he first described in 1958... His work focused on British data and observed that in years when the unemployment rate was high, wages tended to be stable, or possibly fall. Conversely, when unemployment was low, wages rose rapidly." (Wikipedia: William Phillips, 7.18.21 UTC 23:37)

Albert O. Hirschman (1915-2012)
"[Hirschman] emphasized the need for unbalanced growth. He argued that disequilibria should be encouraged to stimulate growth and help mobilize resources, because developing countries are short of decision making skills." (Wikipedia: Albert O. Hirschman, 7.29.21 UTC 00:07 )

Paul Samuelson (1915-2009)
"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. He was also author of the best selling economics textbook of all time, Economics: An Introductory Analysis first published in 1948." (Wikipedia: Paul Samuelson, 8.11.21 UTC 15:33)

John Tukey (1915-2000)
"[Tukey]... is best known for development of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity and the Teichmuller-Tukey lemma all bear his name." (Wikipedia: John Tukey, 8.6.21 UTC 00:06)

Leonid Hurwicz (1917-2008)
"[Hurwicz] originated the concept of incentive compatibility and showed how desired outcomes can be achieved by using incentive compatible mechanism design." (Wikipedia: Leonid Hurwicz, 5.15.21 UTC 01:03)

Franco Modigliani (1918-2003)
"[Modigliani]... formulated in 1958, along with Merton Miller, the Modigliani-Miller theorem for corporate finance. The theorem posits that under certain assumptions, the value of a firm is not affected by whether it is financed by equity (selling shares) or debt (borrowing money)..." (Wikipedia: Franco Modigliani, 8.18.21 UTC 18:31)

Trevor Swan (1918-1989)
"[Swan] best known for his work on the Solow-Swan growth model, published simultaneously by Robert Solow, for his work on integrating internal and external balance as represented by the Swan Diagram, and for pioneering work in macroeconomic modeling, which predated that of Lawrence Klein but remained unpublished until 1989." (Wikipedia: Trevor Swan, 5.4.21 UTC 11:49)

Robert Heilbroner (1919-2005)
"[Heilbroner] wrote some 20 books including The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers in 1953, a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes." (Wikipedia: Robert Heilbroner, 7.23.21 UTC 08:00)

Hyman Minsky (1919-1996)
"[Minsky's] research attempted to provide an understanding and explanation of the characteristics of financial crises, which he attributed to swings in a potentially fragile financial system. Minsky is sometimes described as a post-Keynesian economist..." (Wikipedia: Hyman Minsky, 6.14.21 UTC 00:11)

Douglass North (1920-2015)
"In 1991, North published a paper, entitled Institutions... This paper summarized much of his earlier research relating to economic and institutional change. North defines institutions as 'humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interactions'." (Wikipedia: Douglas North, 8.13.21 UTC 13:59)

John Harasanyi (1920-2000)
"[Harasanyi] is best known for his contributions to the study of game theory and its application to economics, specifically for developing the highly innovative analysis of games of incomplete information, so-called Bayesian games." (Wikipedia: John Harasanyi, 7.24.21 UTC 10:38)

Celso Furtado (1920-2004)
"Furtado's work focuses on development and underdevelopment on the persistence of poverty in peripheral countries throughout the world. He is viewed, along with Raul Prebisch, as one of the main formulators of economic structuralism..." (Wikipedia: Celso Furtado, 7.16.21 UTC 18:53)

Christopher Freeman (1921-2010)
"[Freeman was] one of the most eminent researchers in innovation studies, modern Kondratiev wave and business cycles theorists. Freeman contributed substantially to the revival of the neo-Schumpeterian tradition focusing on the crucial role of innovation for economic development and of scientific and technological activities for well being." (Wikipedia: Christopher Freeman, 4.14.21 UTC 11:51)

Kenneth Arrow (1921-2017)
"[Arrow's] most significant works are his contributions to social choice theory, notably 'Arrow's impossibility theorem', and his work on general equilibrium analysis. He has also provided foundational work in many other areas of economics including endogenous growth theory and the economics of information." (Wikipedia: Kenneth Arrow, 8.22.21 UTC 02:07)

Gerard Debreu (1921-2004)
"In 1954, [Debreu] published a breakthrough paper, entitled Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy, together with Kenneth Arrow, in which they provided a definite mathematical proof of the existence of a general equilibrium, using topological rather than calculus based methods." (Wikipedia: Gerard Debreu, 8.10.21 UTC 06:15)

Thomas Schelling (1921-now)
"Schelling was... a professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy and arms control... The Strategy of Conflict, which Schelling published in 1960, pioneered the study of bargaining and strategic behavior in what Schelling refers to as 'conflict behavior'." (Wikipedia: Thomas Schelling, 8.21.21 UTC 20:58)

William Baumol (1922-now)
"Among [Baumol's] better-known contributions include the theory of contestable markets, the Baumol-Tobin model of transactions demand for money, Baumol's cost disease, which discusses the rising costs associated with service industries, Baumol's sales revenue maximization model and Pigou taxes." (Wikipedia: William Baumol, 5.7.21 UTC 16:21)

Gordon Tullock (1922-2014)
"Tullock is best known for his work on public choice theory, the application of economic thinking to political issues... Tullock developed a theory referred to as rent-seeking. Rent seeking, according to public choice theory, is securing profits through the political process rather than the market process of exchange." (Wikipedia: Gordon Tullock, 5.20.21 UTC 21:45)

Jacob Mincer (1922-2006)
"Mincer's ground-breaking work: Schooling, Experience and Earnings, published in 1974, used data from the 1950 and 1960 censuses to relate income distribution in America to the varying amounts of education and on-the job training among workers." (Wikipedia: Jacob Mincer, 12.3.21 UTC 16:03)

Merton Miller (1923-2000)
"In 1958... [Miller] collaborated with his colleague Franco Modigliani on the paper The Cost of Capital, Corporate Finance and the Theory of Investment. This paper urged a fundamental objection to the traditional view of corporate finance, according to which a corporation can reduce its cost of capital by finding the right debt-to-equity ratio." (Wikipedia: Merton Miller, 7.5.21 UTC 18:21)

Lloyd Shapley (1923-2016)
"Along with the Shapley value, stochastic games, the Bondareva-Shapley theorem (which implies that convex games have non-empty cores), the Shapley-Shubik power index (for weighted or block voting power), the Gale-Shapley algorithm (for the stable marriage problem), the concept of a potential game (with Dov Monderer), the Aumann-Shapley pricing, the Harsanyi-Shapley solution, the Snow-Shapley theorem for matrix games and the Shapley-Folkman lemma bear his name." (Wikipedia: Lloyd Shapley, 8.17.21 UTC 15:50)

Ernest Mandel (1923-1995)
"[Mandel] considered it his mission to transmit the heritage of classical Marxist thought, deformed by the experience of Stalinism and the Cold War, to a new generation." (Wikipedia: Ernest Mandel, 8.13.21 UTC 06:00)

Mason Gaffney (1923-now)
"[Gaffney]... was a major critic of the Neoclassical economics from a Georgist point of view." (Wikipedia: Mason Gaffney, 8.18.21 UTC 08:37)

Alfred Conrad (1924-1970)
"[Conrad] belonged to the quantitative economic current called new economic history, or cliometrics... In 1958 he co-authored The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South... with John R. Meyer." (Wikipedia: Alfred H. Conrad, 3.26.21 UTC 08:28)

Robert Solow (1924-now)
"Solow's model of economic growth... allows the determinants of economic growth to be separated into increases in inputs (labor and capital) and technical progress... Using his model, Solow calculated that about four-fifths of the growth in the U.S. output per worker was attributable to technical progress." (Wikipedia: Robert Solow, 8.16.21 UTC 04:18)

Frank Hahn (1925-1989)
"A famous problem of economic theory, the conditions under which money (which is intrinsically worthless) can have a positive value in a general equilibrium is called 'Hahn's problem' after him. (Wikipedia: Frank Hahn, 5.20.21 UTC 10:43)

Stanley Reiter (1925-2014)
"Reiter is a leading pioneer in the field of mechanism design... In 1960, Reiter coined the term 'cliometrics'." (Wikipedia: Stanley Reiter, 1.6.21 UTC 16:36)

Robert Fogel (1926-2013)
"[Fogel] is best known as an advocate of new economic history (cliometrics) - the use of quantitative methods in history." (Wikipedia: Robert Fogel, 7.26.21 UTC 03:56)

John R. Meyer (1927- 2009)
"Meyer credited with creating the field of transportation economics and was one of the pioneers of cliometrics." (Wikipedia: John R. Meyer, 2.13.21 UTC 08:31)

Barbara Bergmann (1927-2015)
"Bergmann has made two main contributions to economics. First, she has argued that discrimination is a pervasive characteristic of labor markets. Second, she has argued against the traditional economic methodology of drawing conclusions from a set of unrealistic assumptions." (Wikipedia: Barbara Bergmann, 5.9.21 UTC 15:04)

Harry Markowitz (1927-now)
"A Markowitz-efficient portfolio is one where no added diversification can lower the portfolio's risk for a given return expectation (alternately, no additional expected return can be gained without increasing the risk of the portfolio). The Markowitz Efficient Frontier is the set of all portfolios that will give the highest expected return for each given level of risk. These concepts of efficiency were essential to the development of the capital assets pricing model." (Wikipedia: Harry Markowitz, 7.18.21 UTC 20:49)

Vernon Smith (1927-now)
"In 1976, Experimental Economics: Induced Value Theory was published... It was the first articulation of the principle behind economic experiments." (Wikipedia: Vernon Smith, 7.24.21 UTC 16:18)

Janos Kornai (1928-now)
"Kornai was among who those initiating the use of mathematical methods in economic planning. He elaborated the theory of two-level planning with Tamas Liptak and directed the first large scale economy wide multi-level planning project. His 1971 book, Anti-Equilibrium, criticizes neoclassical neoclassical economics, particularly general equilibrium theory." (Wikipedia: Janos Kornai, 3.9.21 UTC)

Henry Manne (1928-2015)
"Manne published many books and articles, with emphasis on law and economics, the free market, and securities regulation. His development of the theory of a 'market for corporate control' is credited with opening the entire field of corporate law to economic analysis..." (Wikipedia: Henry Manne, 11.12.22 UTC 07:25)

John Forbes Nash (1928-2015)
"Nash... made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations. Nash's work has provided insight into the factors that govern chance and decision making inside complex systems found in everyday life." (Wikipedia: John Forbes Nash, 7.27.21 UTC 07:37)

Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005)
"Frank... promoted dependency theory after 1970 and world-systems theory after 1984... He published widely on political economy, economic history, international relations, historical sociology and world history." (Wikipedia: Andre Gunder Frank, 8.19.21 UTC 12:22)

John Muth (1930-2005)
"Muth is the 'father of the rational expectations revolution in economics primarily due to his article Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements in 1961." (Wikipedia: John Muth, 12.1.21 UTC 15:48)

Paul Davidson (1930-now)
"Davidson... is one of the leading spokesmen of the post-Keynesian economics. He has contributed to important debates on economic policy (natural resources, international monetary system, developing countries' debt)..." (Wikipedia: Paul Davidson, 5.9.21 UTC 23:27)

Richard Nelson (1930-now)
"[Nelson] is one of the leading figures int he revival of evolutionary economics thanks to his book An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change in 1982 written jointly with Sidney Winter." (Wikipedia: Richard Nelson, 7.15.21 UTC 05:45)

Pierangelo Garegnani (1930-2011)
"Garegnani is one of the leading theoretical critics of neoclassical economics. He has published several books and articles concerning the classical economic theory, from Ricardo to Sraffa, as an alternative theoretical foundation to analyze the capitalist economy." (Wikipedia: Pierangelo Garegnani, 4.17.21 UTC 14:56)

Thomas Sowell (1930-now)
"Sowell writes from a libertarian-conservative perspective... Themes of Sowell's writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education and decision-making, to classical and Marxist economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities." (Wikipedia: Thomas Sowell, 8.18.21 UTC 02:56)

Luigi Passinetti (1930-now)
"[Passinetti's] contributions to economics include developing the analytical foundations of neo-Ricardian economics, including the theory of value and distribution, as well as work in the line of Kaldorian theory of growth and income distribution." (Wikipedia: Luigi Passinetti, 8.19.21 UTC 12:43)

Harold Demsetz (1930-now)
"Demsetz... was one of the pioneers of the approach now called New Institutional Economics. He is a founder of the field of managerial economics. He has expanded the theory of property rights now prevalent in law and economics." (Wikipedia: Harold Demsetz, 5.7.21 UTC 05:57)

Reinhard Selten (1930-now)
"[Selten] is well known for his work in game theory, bounded rationality and can be considered as one of the founding fathers of experimental economics... [Selten] developed an example of a game called Selten's Horse..." (Wikipedia: Reinhard Selten, 7.27.21 UTC 03:44)

Gary Becker (1930-2014)
"Becker was one of the first economists to analyze topics that had been researched in sociology, including racial discrimination, crime, family organization and rational addiction." (Wikipedia: Gary Becker, 7.4.21 UTC 16:09)

Robert Aumann (1930-now)
"Aumann was the first to define the concept of correlated equilibrium in game theory, which is a type of equilibrium in non-cooperative games that is more flexible than the classical Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, Aumann has introduced the first purely formal account of the notion of common knowledge in game theory." (Wikipedia: Robert Aumann, 5.23.21 UTC 07:30)

Samir Amin (1931-now)
"According to Amin, capitalism and its evolution can only be understood as a single integrated global system, composed of 'developed countries, which constitute the Center and of 'underdeveloped countries' which are the Peripheries of the system. (Wikipedia: Samir Amin 8.13.21 UTC 08:50)

Robert Mundell (1932-now)
"Mundell is know as the 'father' of the euro, as he laid the groundwork for its introduction through this work and helped to start the movement known as supply-side economics. Mundell is also known for the Mundell-Fleming model and Mundell-Tobin effect." (Wikipedia: Robert Mundell, 4.30.23 UTC 09:45)

Mancur Olson (1932-1998)
"[Olson's] most influential contributions were institutional economics, and in the role which private property, taxation, public goods, collective action, and contract rights play in economic development." (Wikipedia: Mancur Olson, 6.23.21 UTC 11:33)

Oliver Williamson (1932-now)
"By drawing attention at the high theoretical level to equivalences and differences between market and non-market decision-making, management and service provision, Williamson was influential in the 1980s and 1990s debates on the boundaries between the public and private sectors." (Wikipedia: Oliver Williamson, 8.16.21 UTC 03:43)

Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)
"Ostrom's early work emphasized the role of public choice on decisions influencing the production of public goods and services... Her later work focused on how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields (common pool resources)." (Wikipedia: Elinor Ostrom, 8.6.21 UTC 03:42)

Edmund Phelps (1933-now)
"[Phelps'] most seminal work inserted a microfoundation, one featuring imperfect information, incomplete knowledge and expectations about waves and prices to support a macroeconomic theory of employment determination and price-wage dynamics." (Wikipedia: Edmund Phelps, 8.4.21 UTC 16:36)

Amartya Sen (1933-now)
"...Sen's work int he field of development economics has had considerable influence in the formulation of the 'Human Development Report', published by the United Nations Development Program. This annual publication that ranks countries on a variety of economic and social indicators owes much to the contributions by Sen among other social choice theorists in the area of economic measurement of poverty and inequality." (Wikipedia: Amartya Sen, 6.29.21 UTC 14:55)

Daniel Kahneman (1934-now)
"Kahneman is notable for his work on the psychology of judgement and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics... With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases and developed prospect theory." (Wikipedia: Daniel Kahneman, 8.21.21 UTC 15:26)

William Sharpe (1934-now)
"Sharpe was one of the originators of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). He created the Sharpe ratio for risk-adjusted investment performance analysis..." (Wikipedia: William Sharpe, 7.5.21 UTC 18:22)

Clive Granger (1934-2009)
"Granger... made contributions to nonlinear time series analysis... In 1964, Granger and Hatanaka published the results of their research in a book on Spectral Analysis of Economic Time Series (Wikipedia: Clive Granger, 8.22.21 UTC 12:22)

James Mirrlees (1936-now)
"[Mirrlees'] papers centered on asymmetric information, which determines the extent to which they should affect the optimal rate of saving in an economy. Among other results, he demonstrated the principles of 'moral hazard' and 'optimal income taxation' discussed in the books of William Vickrey." (Wikipedia: James Mirrlees, 6.14.21 UTC 16:00)

Robert Lucas Jr. (1937-now)
"Lucas (1976) challenged the foundations of macroeconomic theory... arguing that macroeconomic model should be built as an aggregated version of microeconomic models which noting that aggregation in the theoretical sense may not be possible within a given model. He developed the 'Lucas critique' of economic policymaking, which holds that relationships that appear to hold in the economy, such as an apparent relationship between inflation and unemployment, could change in response to changes in economic policy." (Wikipedia: Robert Lucas Jr, 4.27.21 UTC 11:45)

Daniel McFadden (1937-now)
"In 1964, McFadden joined the faculty of UC Berkely, focusing on choice behavior and the problem of linking economic theory and measurement. In 1974 he introduced Conditional logit analysis." (Wikipedia: Daniel McFadden, 6.15.21 UTC 06:13)

Amos Tversky (1937-1996)
"Tversky's work with Daniel Kahneman focused on the psychology of prediction and probability judgement; later they worked together to develop prospect theory, which aims to explain irrational human economic choices and is considered one of the seminal works of behavioral economics." (Wikipedia: Amos Tversky, 8.1.21 UTC 14:52)

Alfred Eichner (1937-1988)
"Eichner was a post-Keynesian economist who challenged the neoclassical price mechanism and asserted that prices are not set through supply and demand but rather through mark-up pricing." (Wikipedia: Alfred Eichner, 6.30.21 UTC 20:41)

Michael Aglietta (1938-now)
"[Aglietta's] monograph A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The U.S. Experience laid the foundation for the regulation school of economics... Aglietta was one of the founders in 1976, with Robert Boyer, of the regulation school." (Wikipedia: Michael Aglietta, 5.20.21 UTC 20:47)

Herman Daly (1938-now)
"Daly was the Senior Economist in the Environmental Department at the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. While there, he was engaged in environmental operations work in Latin America. He is closely associated with theories of a steady-state economy. He was co-founder and associate editor of the journal, Ecological Economics." (Wikipedia: Herman Daly, 7.15.21 UTC 04:35)

Samuel Bowles (1939-now)
"[Bowles'] work belongs to the neo-Marxian (variably called post-Marxian) tradition of economic thought. However, his perspective on economics is eclectic and draws on various schools of thought, including what he (and others) refer to as post-Walrasian economics." (Wikipedia: Samuel Bowles, 8.17.21 UTC 04:19)

Richard Posner (1939-now)
"Posner is the author of nearly 40 books on jurisprudence, economics and several other topics, including Economic Analysis of LawThe Economics of JusticeThe Problems of JurisprudenceSex and ReasonLaw, Pragmatism and Democracy, and The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy." (Wikipedia: Richard Posner, 7.9.21 UTC 03:11)

Neil Wallace (1939-now)
"Wallace is considered one of the main proponents of new classical macroeconomics... In 1975 he and Thomas Sargent proposed the policy-ineffectiveness proposition, which refuted a basic assumption of Keynesian economics." (Wikipedia: Neil Wallace, 11.4.21 UTC 21:26)

Eugene Fama (1939-2014)
"Fama is best known for his empirical work on portfolio theory, asset pricing and the efficient-market hypothesis... Fama is most often thought of a s the father of the efficient-market hypothesis, beginning with his PhD thesis. In 1965 he published an analysis of the behavior of stock market prices that showed that they exhibited so-called fat fail distribution properties, implying extreme movement were more common than predicted on the assumption of normality." (Wikipedia: Eugene Fama, 7.2.21 UTC 03:20)

Dale Mortensen (1939-2014)
"Mortensen's research focused on labor economics, macroeconomics and economic theory. He is especially known for his pioneering work on the search and matching theory of frictional unemployment. He extended the insights from this work to study labor turnover and reallocation, research and development and personal relationships." (Wikipedia: Dale Mortensen, 12.23.21 UTC 19:51)

Arthur Laffer (1940-now)
"Laffer is best known for the Laffer curve, an illustration of the theory that there exists some tax rate between 0% and 100% that will result in maximum tax revenue for governments." (Wikipedia: Arthur Laffer, 8.9.21 UTC 16:43)

George Akerlof (1940-now)
"Akerlof is perhaps best known for his article, 'The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism' published in 1970, in which he identified certain severe problems that afflict markets characterized by asymmetric information..." (Wikipedia: George Akerlof, 8.21.21 UTC 22:55)

Edward Prescott (1940-now)
"[Prescott] is a major figure in macroeconomics, especially the theories of business cycles and general equilibrium. In his article, Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans published in 1977 with Finn Kydland, he analyzed whether central banks should have strict numerical targets or be allowed to use their discretion in setting monetary policy. He is also well know for his work on the Hodrick-Prescott filter, used to smooth fluctuations in a time series." (Wikipedia: Edward Prescott, 7.28.21 UTC 05:13)

Peter Diamond (1940-now)
"Diamond has made fundamental contributions to a view of areas including government debt and accumulation, capital markets and risk sharing, optimal taxation, search and matching in labor markets and social insurance." (Wikipedia: Peter Diamond, 8.1.21 UTC 21:09)

Lance Taylor (1940-now)
"Taylor is a well know structuralist macroeconomists, working to understand the macroeconomy through 'its major institutions and distributive relationships across productive sectors and social groups'... Taylor has published extensively in the fields of macroeconomics and development economics, focusing on the interaction of growth, stability and income distribution under different social relations. He contributed to the development of modern commutable general equilibrium models." (Wikipedia: Lance Taylor, 3.25.21 UTC 04:21)

Myron Scholes (1941-now)
"Scholes developed a method to determine the value of derivatives. The model provides a conceptual framework for valuing options, such as calls or puts and is referred to as the Black-Scholes model." (Wikipedia: Myron Scholes, 8.10.21 UTC 06:00)

Hernando de Soto Polar (1941-now)
"Polar is known for his work on the informal economy and on the importance of business and property rights... The main message of Polar's work and writings is that no nation can have a strong market economy without adequate participation in an information framework that records ownership of property and other economic information." (Wikipedia: Hernando de Soto, 8.20.21 UTC 16:59)

Robert Engle III (1942-now)
"Engle's most important contribution was his path-breaking discovery of a method for analyzing unpredictable movements in financial market prices and interest rates. Accurate characterization and prediction of these volatile movements are essential for quantifying and effectively managing risk." (Wikipedia: Robert Engle III, 6.17.21 UTC 10:13)

Christopher Sims (1942-now)
"Sims has published numerous important papers in his areas of research: econometrics and macroeconomic theory and policy. Among other things, he was one of the main promoters of the use of vector auto-regression in empirical macroeconomics... He has also advocated Bayesian statistics, arguing for its power in formulating and evaluating economic policies." (Wikipedia: Christopher A. Sims, 7.12.21 UTC 10:43)

Dierdre McCloskey (1942-now)
"In 2013, she received the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award... for her work examining factors in history that led to advancement in human achievement and prosperity. Her main research interests include the origins of the modern world, the misuses of statistical significance in economics and other sciences and the study of capitalism..." (Wikipedia: Dierdre McClosky, 8.14.21 UTC 07:14)

Thomas Sargent (1943-now)
"[Sargent] specializes in the fields of macroeconomics, monetary economics and time series econometrics... Sargent is one of the leaders of the 'rational expectations revolution' which argues that the people being modeled by economists can predict the future..." (Wikipedia: Thomas J. Sargent, 8.13.21 UTC 16:51)

Michael Spence (1943-now)
"Spence is noted for his job-market signaling model, which inspired research into this branch of contract theory." (Wikipedia: Michael Spence, 6.2.21 UTC 03:23)

Finn Kydland (1943-now)
"Kydland's main areas of teaching and interest are business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy and labor economics... His main areas of teaching and interest are business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy and labor economics." (Wikipedia: Finn E. Kydland, 7.28.21 UTC 05:11)

Joseph Stiglitz (1943-now)
"Stiglitz' most famous research was on screening, a technique used by one economic agent to extract otherwise private information for another... Stiglitz made early contributions to a theory of public finance stating that an optimal supply of local public goods can be funded entirely through capture of the land rents generated by those goods (when population distributions are optimal). Stiglitz dubbed this the Henry George theorem." (Wikipedia: Joseph Stiglitz, 7.30.21 UTC 23:40)

Robert C. Merton (1944-now)
"[Merton] is known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black-Scholes formula... Merton's research focuses on finance theory including lifecycle finance, optimal intertemporal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of options, risky corporate debt, loan guarantees, and other complex derivative securities. He has also written on the operation and regulation of financial institutions." (Wikipedia: Robert C. Merton, 7.12.21 UTC 05:38)

James Heckman (1944-now)
"Heckman is noted for his contributions to selection bias and self-selection analysis, especially Heckman correction. He is also well known for his empirical research in labor economics, particularly regarding the efficacy of early childhood education programs.... His work has been devoted to the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation, with special emphasis on models of individuals and dis-aggregated groups, and the problems and possibilities created by heterogeneity, diversity, and unobserved counterfactual states." (Wikipedia: James Heckman, 8.11.21 UTC 19:17)

Richard Thaler (19445-now)
"Thaler is a theorist in behavioral economics and has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and others on multiple occasions in further defining that field." (Wikipedia: Richard Thaler, 5.17.21 UTC 02:00)

Anwar Shaikh (1945-now)
"[Shaikh] found neoclassical economics unpersuasive, and the quest for more solid foundations led him to the work of Roy Harrod, Wassily Leontief, Michal Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Piero Sraffa and Luigi Passinetti, and subsequently to Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx. The quest for a modern political economy of developed capitalism became a central theme of his subsequent work." (Wikipedia: Anwar Shaikh, 6.13.21 UTC 00:24)

Angus Deaton (1945-now)
"[Deaton's] research focuses primarily on poverty, inequality, health, wellbeing and economic development." (Wikipedia: Angus Deaton, 8.19.21 UTC 12:13)

W. Brian Arthur (1946-now)
"Arthur is one of the early economic researchers in the emerging complexity field... Arthur is noted for his seminal works studying the impacts of positive feedback or increasing returns in economies, and how these increasing returns magnify small, random occurrences in the market place'." (Wikipedia: W. Brian Arthur, 6.3.21 UTC 00:28)

Diane Elson (1946-now)
"Elson is noted for her work on issues of development and human rights. A theme in her most recent work is gender inequality and economic and social rights." (Wikipedia: Diane Elson, 4.8.21 UTC 22:48)

Geoffrey Hodgson (1946-now)
"Hodgson is recognized as one of the leading figures of modern critical institutionalism which carries forth the critical spirit and intellectual tradition of the founders of institutional economics, particularly that of Thorstein Veblen. His broad research interests span from evolutionary economics and history of economic thought to Marxism and theoretical biology. He first became know for his book Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics (1988), which criticizes modern 'mainstream' economics and calls to revise economic theory on the ground s of institutionalism." (Wikipedia: Geoffrey Hodgson, 7.29.21 UTC 07:04)

Robert Shiller (1946-now)
"In 1981, Shiller published an article in which he challenged the efficient-market-hypothesis, which was the dominant view in the economics profession at the time... Shiller concluded that the volatility of the stock market was greater than could plausibly be explained by any rational view of the future." (Wikipedia: Robert Shiller, 8.13.21 UTC 11:32)

Janet Yellen (1946-now)
"Yellen is a Keynesian economist... Yellen has had a remarkable academic career largely focused on analysis of the mechanisms of unemployment and labor markets, monetary and fiscal policies and international trade." (Wikipedia: Janet Yellen, 8.23.21 UTC 06:05)

John B. Taylor (1946-now)
"Taylor... developed the staggered contract model of overlapping wage and price setting, which became one of the building blocks of the New Keynesian macroeconomics that rebuilt much of the traditional micromodel on rational expectations microfoundations... Taylor's interest rate equation has come to be known as the Taylor rule..." (Wikipedia: John B. Taylor, 6.18.21 UTC 01:01)

Martin Wolf (1946-now)
"Wolf became one of the more influential drivers of the 2008-2009 Keynesian resurgence, and used his platform on the Financial Times to advocate a massive fiscal and monetary response to the financial crisis." (Wikipedia: Martin Wolf, 5.4.21 UTC 12:17)

Mark Skousen (1947-now)
"Skousen launched a non-partisan, libertarian conference, then titled 'FEEFest' which premiered in Las Vegas in 2002. The goal was to bring all think tanks, organizations and people who are concerned about liberty, personal freedom, civil rights, free market principles and economic freedom, to meet and discuss important issues of the day. (Wikipedia: Mark Skousen, 7.26.21 UTC 21:02)

Christopher Pissarides (1948-now)
"Pissarides is mostly known for his contributions to the search and matching theory for studying the interactions between the labor market and the macro economy. He helped develop the concept of the matching function (explaining the flows from unemployment to employment at a given moment of time), and pioneered the empirical work on its estimation. Pissarides has also done research on structural change and growth." (Wikipedia: Christopher Pissarides, 7.10.21 UTC 05:09)

Oliver Blanchard (1948-now)
"Blanchard has published numerous research papers in the field of macroeconomics, as well as undergraduate and graduate macroeconomics textbooks... During his tenure as Chief Economist he reshaped IMF policies. Curing the great Recession Blanchard supported the global fiscal stimulus. During its slow recovery he urged a cautious removal of stimulus and advocated quantitative easing." (Wikipedia: Oliver Blanchard, 4.8.21 UTC 01:18)

Oliver Hart (1948-now)
"Hart is an expert on contract theory, theory of the firm, corporate finance, and law and economics. His research centers on the roles that ownership structure and contractual arrangements play in the governance and boundaries of corporations. He has used his theoretical work on firms in two legal cases as a government expert..." (Wikipedia: Oliver Hart, 2.16.21 UTC 17:55)

Bengt Holmstrom (1949-now)
"Holmstrom is particularly well known for his work on principal-agent theory. More generally he has worked on the theory of contracting and incentives especially as applied to the theory of the firm, to corporate governance and to liquidity problems in financial crises." (Wikipedia: Bengt Holmstrom, 8.10.21 UTC 03:18)

Joseph Tainter (1949-now)
"Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their energy subsidies' reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society involuntarily sheds a significant portion of its complexity." (Wikipedia: Joseph Tainter, 8.4.21 UTC 8.4.21)

Eric Maskin (1950-now)
"[Maskin] particularly well known for his papers on mechanism design/implementation theory and dynamic games... His current research projects include comparing different electoral rules, examining the causes of inequality, and studying coalition formation." (Wikipedia: Eric Maskin, 6.12.21 UTC 18:34))

Roger Myerson (1951-now)
"Myerson made a path-breaking contribution to mechanism design theory when he discovered a fundamental connection between the allocation to be implements and the monetary transfer needed to induce informed agents to reveal their information truthfully." (Wikipedia: Roger Myerson, 6.21.21 UTC 10:35)

Alvin Roth (1951-now)
"Roth has worked in the fields of game theory, market design and experimental economics. In particular, he helped redesign mechanisms for selecting medical residents, New York City high schools and Boston primary schools." (Wikipedia: Alvin Roth, 4.17.21 UTC 17:10)

Lars Peter Hansen (1952-now)
"Hansen is best known for his work on the Generalized Method of Moments, he is also a distinguished macroeconomist, focusing on the linkages between financial sector and the macroeconomy." (Wikipedia: Lars Peter Hansen, 5.16.21 UTC 04:54)

Nancy Folbre (1952-now)
"Folbre focuses on the economics of care... Folbre argues that mainstream economists do not pay enough attention to the economics of care. This is detrimental to women because the exclusion of non-market and care work from mainstream economic analysis can marginalize women and children..." (Wikipedia: Nancy Folbre, 5.20.21 UTC 20:14)

Francis Fukuyama (1952-now)
"Fukuyama is known for his book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book, Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity in 1995, modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics." (Wikipedia: Francis Fukuyama, 8.18.21 UTC 20:10)

Kenneth Rogoff (1953-now)
"[Rogoff's] book This Time IS Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, which he co-authored with Carmen Reinhart, was released in October 2009." (Wikipedia: Kenneth Rogoff, 4.7.21 UTC 02:12)

Jean Tirole (1953-now)
"[Tirole] was able to determine a way to calculate the optimal prices for the regulation of natural monopolies and wrote a number of articles about the regulation of capital markets with a focus on the differential of control between decentralized lenders and the centralized control of bank management." (Wikipedia: Jean Tirole, 8.20.21 UTC 20:05)

Paul Krugman (1953-now)
"Krugman has written extensively on international economic, including international trade, economic geography and international finance... Krugman's work on New Trade Theory (NTT) converged to what is usually called 'new economic geography' which Krugman began to develop in a seminal 1991 paper, Increasing Returns and Economic Geography." (Wikipedia: Paul Krugman, 8.21.21 UTC 23:24)

Julio Rotemberg (1953-now)
"[Rotemberg] is known for his collaboration with Michael Woodford on the first New Keynesian DSGE model, especially on monopolistic competition. He is also known for an alternative model of sticky prices." (Wikipedia: Julio Rotemberg, 3.4.21 UTC 06:51)

Jeffrey Sachs (1954-now)
"Sachs has written extensively on climate change, disease control and globalization." (Wikipedia: Jeffrey Sachs, 8.22.21 UTC 15:50)

Paul Romer (1955-now)
"[Romer's] 1983 dissertation... amounted to constructing a mathematical representation of an economy in which technological change is the result of the intentional actions of people, such as research and development. It led to two Journal of Political Economy articles published in 1986 and 1990, respectively, which started endogenous growth theory.'." (Wikipedia: Paul Romer, 8.1.21 UTC 15:57)

Carmen Reinhart (1955-now)
"Reinhart has written and published on a variety of topics in macroeconomics and international finance including: international capital flows, capital controls, inflation and commodity prices, banking and sovereign debt crises, currency crashes, and contagion." (Wikipedia: Carmen Reinhart, 6.25.21 UTC 23:15)

Michael Woodford (1955-now)
"[Woodford] with Julio Rotemberg developed one of the first micofounded New Keynesian macroeconomic models. Since then he has used this framework to study many topics related to monetary policy, including the fiscal theory of the price level, the effectiveness of monetary policy as consumers use more credit and less cash, and inflation targeting rules." (Wikipedia: Michael Woodford, 12.8.20 UTC 14:42)

Ernst Fehr (1956-now)
"Fehr is also well known for his important contributions to the new field of neuroeconomics, as well as to behavioral economics, behavioral finance and experimental economics." (Wikipedia: Ernst Fehr, 3.22.21 UTC 15:40)

Alberto Alesina (1957-now)
"Alesina's work has covered a variety of topics including political business cycles, the political economy of fiscal policy and budget deficits, the process of European integration, stabilization policies in high inflation countries, the determination of the size of countries, currency unions, the political economic determinants of redistriubtive policies, differences in the welfare state in the U.S. and Europe, the effect of alternative electoral systems on economic policies, and the determination of the choice of the choice of different electoral systems." (Wikipedia: Alberto Alesina, 6.12.21 UTC 09:43)

Huw Dixon (1958-now)
"Dixon authored a book Surfing Economics in 2001, which explores New Keynesian economics, the natural rate, bounded rationality, social learning and the meaning of economics." (Wikipedia: Huw Dixon, 6.24.21 UTC 05:34)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960-now)
"Taleb criticized the risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises, subsequently profiting from the late 2000s financial crisis. He advocates what he calls a 'black swan robust' society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events." (Wikipedia: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 8.5.21 UTC 02:56)

Ha-Joon Chang (1963-now)
"Chang's 2014 book Economics: The User's Guide, is an introduction to economics accessibly written for the general public." (Wikipedia: Ha-Joon Chang, 4.26.21 UTC 22:24)