Nytimes_Remembering Samuelson, Who Forever Fused Economics With Math - NYTimes

7/27/2019 Nytimes_Remembering Samuelson, Who Forever Fused Economics With Math - NYTimes

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24/05/13 Remembering Samuelson, Who Forever Fused Economics with Math - NYTimes.com

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ByEDWARD L. GLAESER

Edward L. Glaeseris an economics professor at Harvard.

Paul Samuelson died on Sunday at the age of 94.

Yale Joel/Time & Life Pictures Getty Images Paul A. Samuelson at M.I.T. in 1950,

where he used mathematics to analyze complex economic theories.

He was an immortal among dismal scientists: one of the mighty trio, along with Kenneth Arrow and Milton Friedman,

who dominated post-war economics, the great formalizer of the field.

Friedmans policy insights may have been more radical and significant; Arrows genius may have produced more

beautiful gems of economic theory. But it was Samuelson who gave economists our toolbox the mathematical

methods that define our field and the magnitude of that gift made him an indispensible economist.

Samuelson grew up in Chicago and entered the University of Chicago in 1932. He was drawn to economics because of

a lecture on Thomas Malthus, where a simple equation seemed to suggest that mankind was drawn inevitably toward

overpopulation and starvation.

The great appeal of Samuelsonian economics would be its use of mathematics to make sense of the human condition,

usually although not always with more success than poor, mistaken Malthus.

The University of Chicago then, as now, had remarkable economists who inspired and mentored Samuelson: the

irascible Frank Knight, expert of entrepreneurship and mentor ofGeorge Stigler; the international trade expert Jacob

Viner(Milton Friedmans adviser); and Paul H. Douglas, a labor economist extraordinaire and later three-term senatorfrom Illinois.

Samuelson ignored their advice to follow Friedman to Columbia University. He instead went to Harvard for graduate

school, apparently imagining it to be some sort of bucolic Eden. In the 1930s, Cambridge was no sylvan retreat, but it

was a sanctuary for European scholars, who fled the dark and gathering storms across the Atlantic. Scholarly migrs,

like Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Gottfried Haberlerand Wassily Leontief, imported Austrian and German knowledge into

the United States and taught the young Paul Samuelson.

Many people associate Samuelson with Keynesianism. He did, after all, make Keynes popular in the United States by

writing and then selling millions of copies of a textbook that helped explain Keyness work. But among academic

economists, Keynesianism came and went. If he were merely another Keynesian, Samuelsons place in intellectualhistory would be similar to the far-more-modestly-known Alvin Hansen, another of his Harvard advisers.

The full measure of Samuelsons influence is that he not only wrote Keynesian arithmetic, but also crafted the

mathematical toolbox that would eventually crack the Keynesian orthodoxy.
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//profiles/hansen.htmhttp://homepage.newschool.edu/het/profiles/leontief.htmhttp://homepage.newschool.edu/het/profiles/haberler.htmhttp://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/schump.htmhttp://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/douglas.htmhttp://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Viner.htmlhttp://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Stigler.htmlhttp://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Knight.htmlhttp://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/malthus.htmhttp://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/articles/samuelson-2/index.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/economy/glaeser.ready.htmlhttp://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/author/edward-l-glaeser/


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When Robert Lucas, the Nobel laureate who micro-founded macroeconomics and challenged Keynes, decided to

switch from history to economics, he spent a summer reading Samuelsons Ph.D. dissertation, The Foundations of

Economic Analysis, by working through the first four chapters, line by line, going back to my calculus books when I

needed to. As a result, by the beginning of fall quarter I was as good an economic technician as anyone on the

Chicago faculty.

One of the oddities of Samuelsons academic life is that he wrote his dissertation the seminal document of modern

mathematical economics under the tutelage of Joseph Alois Schumpeter, whose own scholarship is essentially math-

free.

Perhaps the physicist and statistician Edwin Bidwell Wilson played a more crucial role in Samuelsons intellectual

arbitrage, his importation of ideas from physics into economics. Samuelsons Foundations, which was finally published

in 1947, is more textbook than research monograph. A smart, mathematically literate young scholar, like the young

Robert Lucas, can really sit down with the book and emerge with the basic tools needed to write academic models.

Samuelsons algebra conquered the profession, and despite the criticism that mathematics engenders in outsiders

it is easy to understand why.

The great subjects of economics are aggregations: groups of people who interact with each other in markets. Given the

complexity of group interactions, logical errors are often unexposed in written discussions. Only the cold purity of

mathematical logic can make transparent the chain of reasoning from assumption to conclusion.

Mathematics doesnt substitute for genuine insight or knowledge of the real world, but it is necessary if economists are

going to craft logically coherent models of complex phenomena. While many mathematical models failed to predict the

current downturn, plenty of non-mathematical seers also failed. If we ever do come to understand the vicissitudes of

asset markets, that understanding will come in the form of formal mathematical analysis, ultimately inspired by

Samuelson.

The start of the economists toolbox is the utility function a somewhat mythical thing, which is emphatically not the

same thing as happiness that we pretend that human beings maximize.

Borrowing from others, Samuelsons dissertation gave us a clear justification for this fictional convenience.

If people can rank outcomes in terms of their desirability, and if they choose one outcome over another, then people

have preferences. (Who can disagree with that?) And if, as Samuelson taught us, those preferences follow a few simple

rules, then human behavior can be described with a utility function. That conclusion allows economists to turn to Newton

and optimization theory.

Samuelsons Foundations was equally important in founding production theory by importing tools from the physical

sciences, like the Le Chatelier principle, where an initial shift engenders off-setting responses.

After publishing his dissertation, Samuelsons output continued to be prodigious. In 1954, he gave us the theory of

public goods, which are things, like national defense or clean air, that can be consumed by multiple people at the same

time, and that no one can be effectively excluded from using. (For example, the United States Army defends me and

you at the same time, usually without firing a shot.) He made major contributions to international trade, such as the

Stolper-Samuelson Theorem, which predicts the relationship between final goods prices and the costs of inputs the

price of labor will rise with the demand for labor-intensive goods. Samuelson crafted the overlapping-generations

model, which remains a workhorse of social security scholarship and dynamic economics.

I teach the first quarter of micro-economic theory to Harvards Ph.D. students, and Samuelsons presence can be felt at

least five times an hour. It is impossible to teach the core skills of our discipline without constantly relying on his

contributions. Samuelson may have passed, but the river of human knowledge has absorbed his scholarship fully.

No thinker could ask for more.

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http://economics.about.com/cs/economicsglossary/g/olg_model.htmhttp://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/stolper.htmhttp://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0829196.htmlhttp://www.answers.com/topic/optimization-theory-mathematicshttp://www.econmodel.com/classic/terms/utility_function.htmhttp://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wilson_Edwin.htmlhttp://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1995/lucas-autobio.html


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Daily Economist, Edward L. Glaeser, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, Mathematics, Milton Friedman, Paul

Samuelson, Robert Lucas, Thomas Robert Malthus, University of Chicago

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1.

Steve Wallace

Berkeley

I hope that Mark who responeded on the 14th has more accurate medical thought than his economic.

Dec. 17, 2009 at 2:01 a.m.
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2.

Tracy W

London, UK

Saed Atshan - what are you talking about? Biomathematics is an important branch of biological research. See

http://en.wikipedia.org...Modern medicine is a different matter - in that it's possible to perform randomised control trials, while it isn't

possible to perform them in the real-world economy. But that's quite different from being able to understand why

something works, or doesn't.

Economics has elegant and rigorous theory.

While I agree with you about microeconomics, I am curious as to which theories in macroeconomics you think

are rigorously grounded?

Economics also draws strongly on emprical evidence. Look at the list of Nobel Lauretes on Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org...

Simon Kuznets - "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and

deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development

Wassily Leontif - "for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic

problems"

Milton Friedman - "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for

his demonstration of the complexity of stabilisation policy" - monetary history work was empirical (as was much

else of what Friedman did, but monetary history work is the famous empirical work)

Richard Stone - "for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts

and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis"Robert Fogel and Douglass North - "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic

theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change"

James Heckman - "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples"

Daniel Khanerman - for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially

concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty

Vernon L Smith - for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis,

especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms"

Robert F Engle - for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)

Clive Granger - for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)

Krugman - "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activityElinor Ostrom - "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons"

And these are simply the ones I recognise off the top of my head as having significant empirical components to

their work (often because they say so in the description).

One group has cured cancers and decoded the genome.

Mathematics was a vital part of decoding the genome. See http://en.wikipedia.org...

And while maybe not vital for curing cancers, mathematics has been an important part of learning how to treat

cancers. See http://www.livescience.com...

You also oddly don't mention the successes of economics - for example the abolishment of the military draft, the

abolishment of the corn laws, the development of Individual Transferrable Quotas as a way of reducing

overfishing, the bringing down of inflationary expectations in the 1980s.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/080222-bts-polyak.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing_theoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Economicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_and_theoretical_biology


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Maybe the economists should learn something and focus on empirics a bit more.

Perhaps critics of economists should learn something about economics first. And in your case, biological science.

Dec. 16, 2009 at 2:34 p.m.

Recommended1

3.

Thorstein Veblen

Earth

"...poor, mistaken Malthus"

Trouble is, Malthus wrote in 1800, and Malthus was entirely correct for the world up until 1800. In addition,parts of Africa are quite likely still Malthusian today... For example, 80% of Tanzanians work in agriculture.

Between 2005 and 2009, the population of Tanzania increased from 37 to 43 million. With a fixed amount of

land and quickly diminishing returns to labor working on land (especially when that labor is not well fed),

Tanzania needs 3% per year agricultural productivity growth just to keep its income steady.

Poor, mistaken Ed Glaeser.

http://firelarrysummersnow.blogspot.com...

Dec. 16, 2009 at 2:34 p.m.

4.

Carl De Riot

N. Bile, NJ

Sheer insanity the first post. Missing the point so blindly as to conjur up if ever the author had hit the proverbial

"broad side of a barn" in any manner of thinking.

Dec. 15, 2009 at 2:16 p.m.

Recommended1

5.

John CPortugal

"Only the cold purity of mathematical logic can make transparent the chain of reasoning from assumption to

conclusion. "
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=12http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=13http://firelarrysummersnow.blogspot.com/2009/12/ed-glaeser-on-samuelson.htmlhttp://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=14


7/15



As we have seen time and time again human beings do not act in a cold logical manner. The marriage of

economics and mathematics produced a generation of economists who believe that human beings act like the

chemicals in a chemical reaction. It also made them believe that the equations gave them all they needed to know

about economics. Ultimately this is a step backward and not a step forward.

Dec. 15, 2009 at 2:14 p.m.

Recommended1

6.

grad student and skeptic

cambridge, ma

Glaeser says that understanding complex phenomena with coherent logic is impossible without mathematical

modeling. If that's true, how in the heck did modern medicine evolve? I'd say that a cell is as complex as aneconomy, and more complex than any economic model ever published. Yet we understand cells much better than

economies.

The bulk of biomedicine rests on pure empirics- randomized control trials and an iterated process of discovery.

I'd say this has worked pretty well. When math has been useful, it has generally been the mathematics of

measurement (sometimes massive complex measurements involving billions of DNA sequences for genome wide

association studies) rather than the ex ante modeling Glaeser extols.

So, biomedicine vs. economics. Economics has elegant and rigorous theory. Biomedicine has some theory

(notably, evolution), but when biologists make a celebrated discovery (drug x kills bacteria y; mutation x causesdisease y), the publication emphasizes the empirical connection between cause and effect, not some abstract

model. Which discipline wins?

One group has cured cancers and decoded the genome. The other is still arguing about when the government

should print and spend money. No contest.

Maybe the economists should learn something and focus on empirics a bit more.

Dec. 15, 2009 at 2:14 p.m.

Recommended3

7.

salgadoce

mexico

Who knew economists could be such wide-eyed romantics when talking about their disciplinary kindred?

I find that those unlucky souls that endure quantitative-rich economic training generally tend to blow the genuine

utility of the 'mathematical toolbox' out of proportion.

The economy is a vast and complex system, with literally trillions of moving parts - its intricate relationship of
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=10http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=11


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parts could rival that of the human body. It is true, with Samuelson's formalization we can discuss economic

activity with more precision; we can discover relationships that were not obvious before. However, this does not

entail that we, in supposedly coordinated fashion, can or should even try to reign in the activities of national and

global economies on such a massive scale.

Math is great. I admit it. For example, we are now able to understand with fair certainty the formation of stars;

with relatively simple mathematical models, we are able to predict the life stages of a star and determine its likely

fate.

But nobody would argue that our attaining this information, given our current level of understanding, can ever give

us license to control or even influence the trajectory of stellar evolution, would they?

Dec. 14, 2009 at 8:41 p.m.

Recommended1

8.

Charles in Vermont

Norwich, VT

Even late in his career, Samuelson continued his interest in mathematics When working in the marketing

department for a major math publisher , I attended the AMS national meeting in San Francisco in 1974. The

exhibit hall was almost empty at the end of the day, when my sales manager pointed out that the lone browser in

our theoretical mathematics section was...Samuelson.

I had used his textbook as an undergraduate and gained many insights, but was put off, as was commentator #3above, by the disconnect from reality that many of the mathematical symbols assumed. The allied discipline of

Computer Science has a phrase for the resulting problem. GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

At least Samuelson could sometimes admit these limitations..

Dec. 14, 2009 at 8:27 p.m.

Recommended1

9.

jcb

portland, or

Verified

". . . with more success than poor, mistaken Malthus."

"If only Malthus, instead of Ricardo, had been the parent stem from

which nineteenth-century economics proceeded, what a much wiser and

richer place the world would be to-day! (Keynes, 1933)

I realize that for you this is scant praise, but for many of the rest of us it gives hope.

Dec. 14, 2009 at 7:13 p.m.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=7http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=8http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=9


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10.

DHM

NJ

"poor, mistaken Malthus"??

So why do I read so much about the coming waves of starvation across the world, as a result of climate change

and the greedy West? And that the only way to avoid this is for the West to give $billions each year to those

developing nations that are responsible for Earth's population going from 4.5b in 1984 to a projected 9.0b in

2050?

Dec. 14, 2009 at 7:13 p.m.

Recommended1

11.

Gerry Shih

San Francisco, CA

What a glorious appraisal by Prof Glaeser. The tidbit about "math-free" poli-scientist Schumpeter guiding

Samuelson's dissertation was pretty fascinating. As was the story of Lucas, historian by training, spending a

summer with it as boot camp. As a student of economics, this was really inspiring-- thanks, Dr Glaeser.

Dec. 14, 2009 at 6:45 p.m.

Recommended1

12.

ChenNYC

I would appreciate this article more if Glaeser weren't such an awful professor.

Dec. 14, 2009 at 6:36 p.m.

Recommended7

13.

EL

Anchorage, AK
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=4http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=5http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/remembering-samuelson-who-fused-economics-with-math/?comments#permid=6


10/15



I remember Samuelson's graduate microeconomics lectures at MIT in the early 1980's inspired me for years to

apply an arsenal of applied mathematics to understanding economics problems. It took me a couple of decades

to realize -- and gradually accept -- that the elaborate mathematical models I built had very little to do with

reality. While Samuelson was an inspiring economist and teacher, the mathematical tools that he encouraged

several generations of economists to use have lost their luster. In graduate school, I wish he had led us outside the

Sloan Building, walked across the bridget to Boston and taught us how to carefully observe the actual behavior of

investment bankers on the other side of the Charles River. I would have learned more that way and be better

prepared to serve as an economist.

Dec. 14, 2009 at 6:28 p.m.

Recommended9

14.

BF

Ohio

Samuelson's 1939 accelerator model was on my macroeconomic theory midterm this semester; absolutely

brilliant.

Dec. 14, 2009 at 5:59 p.m.

15.MARK KLEIN, M.D.

OAKLAND, CA

Too bad no one can win the Nobel Prize for recommending living within one's means, debt avoidance, and delay

of gratification. The world of the quants Samuelson created tried to justify the irrationality of avoiding the above

sound economic principles almost destroyed the global financial system.

Dec. 14, 2009 at 5:59 p.m.

Recommended4

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Annie Lowrey covers economic policy for the Washington bureau of The New York Times.


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Former Treasury Official

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University of Chicago

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Princeton University

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University of California, Berkeley

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About Economix

Economics doesn't have to be complicated. It is the study of our lives our jobs, our homes, our families and the little

decisions we face every day. Here at Economix, journalists and economists analyze the news and use economics as a
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