- Person
- Paul Samuelson
- Lived
- 1915–2009
- Field
- Economics
- From
- American
The story
Paul Samuelson originally prepared his textbook for MIT's then-mandatory undergraduate economics course. Economics: An Introductory Analysis was first published in 1948, when the Great Depression and the war were fresh in people's minds. In it he argued that the world's failure to deal adequately with the Depression had done much to bring about the rise of dictatorships and the war itself.
The book brought the ideas of John Maynard Keynes to beginning students. MIT News describes it as the first textbook to explain Keynesian principles at that level, though Lorie Tarshis had published a Keynesian text in 1947. Like Tarshis's book, it was attacked by some conservatives during the McCarthy era, and Samuelson was even accused of communism, but his calm, scientific style helped it win wide adoption.
The book became the best-selling economics text of all time. It sold more than 300,000 copies of each edition from 1961 to 1976, was translated into about 40 languages and sold some four million copies in all. From 1985 William Nordhaus joined as co-author, and the 19th edition appeared in 2009. Later editions developed what Samuelson called a neoclassical synthesis, arguing that nations could control both depression and inflation through fiscal and monetary policy. The book coined that term, and the synthesis became the leading school of mainstream economics in the second half of the twentieth century.
For decades future scholars, policy makers and business leaders were introduced to economics through his book. Business Week wrote in 1959 that some economists considered it his greatest contribution, saying it had gone a long way toward giving the world a common economic language. Robert Lucas called Samuelson the Julia Child of economics, able to teach the basics while making readers feel like insiders in a complex culture.
Its influence runs through later textbooks as well. Paul Krugman has said that the undergraduate text he wrote with Robin Wells was strongly inspired by the first edition of Samuelson's book, and historians trace the development of mainstream economic thought by comparing its successive editions.
Why it matters
Samuelson's textbook taught the basics of economics to millions of students in dozens of countries.
About Paul Samuelson
MIT economist who gave modern economics its mathematical foundations, wrote the best-selling economics textbook of all time and became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics.
More about Paul Samuelson
- Paul Samuelson helped make MIT economics world-classWhen Paul Samuelson joined MIT in 1940, its economics department trained no graduate students; within two decades it ranked first in the field.
- Paul Samuelson made mathematics the language of economicsPaul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis, published in 1947 from his Harvard thesis, showed how mathematics could make economics a rigorous science.
- Paul Samuelson studied how to provide public goodsPaul Samuelson pioneered the revealed preference approach to consumer choice and showed how to allocate resources between public and private goods.
Sources
- Paul A. Samuelson, economist, dies at 94 MIT News
- Paul Samuelson, Nobel Prize-winning economist, 1915-2009 University of Chicago News
- Economics (textbook) Wikipedia
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