Paul samuelson economist biography

More than any other economist, Paul Samuelson raised the level of mathematical analysis in the profession. Until the late 1930s, when Samuelson started his stunning and steady stream of articles, economics was typically understood in terms of verbal explanations and diagrammatic models.

Samuelson wrote his first published article, “A Note on the Measurement of Utility,” as a twenty-one-year-old doctoral student at Harvard. He introduced the concept of “revealed preference” in a 1938 article. His goal was to be able to tell by observing a consumer’s choices whether he or she was better off after a change in prices, and indeed, Samuelson determined the circumstances under which one could tell.

The consumer revealed by choices his or her preferences—hence the term “revealed preferences.”

Samuelson’s magnum opus, which did more than any other single book to spread the mathematical revolution in economics, is Foundations of Economic Analysis. Based on his Harvard Ph.D.