Monday, September 15, 2014

Profile of Ken Arrow

My office neighbor Ken Arrow is profiled by Janet Stotsky in the September 2014 issue of the IMF's magazine Finance and Development. At 93, he continues to be a role model: Path Breaker 

Here are the concluding paragraphs:

"Arrow, 93, said he has always been more stimulated by working out problems and that once he works them out “I must say I kind of lose interest.” That’s why even though he received a Nobel Prize for his work on general equilibrium theory, he is prouder of his work on social choice theory.
Several other researchers, such as the late Lionel McKenzie, were working on the same problems in general equilibrium theory at the time Arrow and Debreu formulated their model. “In some respects . . . if I weren’t there, it wouldn’t have made that much difference.”
But no one else was asking the social choice questions. “So that I am proud of.”

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