Fields of Interest
As professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuelson worked in many fields including:
- Welfare economics, in which he popularised the Lindahl–Bowen–Samuelson conditions (criteria for deciding whether an action will improve welfare) and demonstrated in 1950 the insufficiency of a national-income index to reveal which of two social options was uniformly outside the other's (feasible) possibility function (Collected Scientific Papers, v. 2, ch. 77; Fischer, 1987, p. 236).
- Public finance theory, in which he is particularly known for his work on determining the optimal allocation of resources in the presence of both public goods and private goods.
- International economics, where he influenced the development of two important international trade models: the Balassa–Samuelson effect, and the Heckscher–Ohlin model (with the Stolper–Samuelson theorem).
- Macroeconomics, where he popularized the overlapping generations model as a way to analyze economic agents' behavior across multiple periods of time (Collected Scientific Papers, v. 1, ch. 21).
- Consumer theory, he pioneered the Revealed Preference Theory, which is a method by which it is possible to discern the best possible option, and thus define consumer's utility functions, by observing the consumer behaviour.
Read more about this topic: Paul Samuelson
Famous quotes containing the words fields of, fields and/or interest:
“I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer’s barn. The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)