Abstract
Paul Anthony Samuelson (born in Gary, Indiana, in 1915) made fundamental contributions to nearly all branches of economic theory. Besides the specific analytic contributions, Samuelson more than anyone else brought economics from its pre–1930s verbal and diagrammatic mode of analysis to the quantitative mathematical style and methods of reasoning that have dominated for many decades. Beyond that, his Economics (McGraw Hill, first edition, 1948, now in its nineteenth edition, the first with a co-author, William D. Nordhaus) has educated millions of students, teaching that economics, however dismal, need not be dull.
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Bibliographic Addendum
Paul Samuelson continued to produce scholarly work as well as comment on public affairs. Among his scholarly writings between 1987 and 2008 are:
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 1989. Ricardo was right! Scandinavian Journal of Economics 91 (1): 47–62.
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 1992. Factor-price equalization by trade in joint and non-joint production. Review of International Economics 1 (1): 1–9.
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 1994. The classical classical fallacy. Journal of Economic Literature 32 (2): 620–639.
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 1997. Proof by certainty equivalents that diversification-across-time does worse, risk corrected, than diversification-throughout-time. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 14 (2): 129–142.
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 2001. A Ricardo-Sraffa paradigm comparing gains from trade in inputs and finished goods. Journal of Economic Literature 39 (4): 1204–1214.
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 2004a. Testing the expected utility maximization hypothesis with limited experimental data. Japan and the World Economy 16 (3): 391–407.
Cooper, James B., Thomas Russell, and Paul A. Samuelson. 2004b. Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and confirm arguments of mainstream economists supporting globalization. Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (3): 135–146.
Essays evaluating Samuelson’s work may be found in
Puttaswamaiah, K., ed. 2002. Paul Samuelson and the foundations of modern economics. New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers.
Wood, John Cunningham, and Ronald N. Woods, eds. 2004. Paul Samuelson, Routledge.
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Fischer, S. (2018). Samuelson, Paul Anthony (1915–2009). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1484
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1484
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