Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist

"This book captures much of the spirit of Paul A. Samuelson. Those who know Samuelson, one of the great economists of the twentieth century, only through his writings may have already sensed his wit, his intellect, his brilliance. This book brings these into focus, through details of his personal history and a wealth of anecdotes from colleagues and students." - Joseph E. Stiglitz (Foreword) "Probably more than anyone else in the twentieth century, he transformed the way economists think and write." - Avinash Dixit "Samuelson set a standard in teaching and citizenship.that few if any will ever match." - Kenneth Rogoff "To know Paul Samuelson is to be engaged in a life-long intellectual conversation with the most important economist of our times." - Richard Zeckhauser About Paul Samuelson: Paul Anthony Samuelson is Institute Professor, Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in the American midwest in the first half of the twentieth century, he was a provocative student of Jacob Viner and was later wooed from Harvard to MIT. He developed original methodology and instigated controversies in his profession. Samuelson is the author of the best-selling economics textbook of all time, for which he never received an author's advance payment. He is legendary for his expansive, penetrating, undogmatic thinking and generosity of spirit-to students and colleagues alike. He has contributed to national economic policies and business trends and was the winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics. Paul Samuelson: On Being an Economist is a concise profile of this original thinker whose forceful, profound, skeptical and expansive intellect drove one of the fundamental transformations of twentieth-century economic theory. About the Authors: Michael Szenberg, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics and Chair, Finance and Economics Department, Lubin School of Business, Pace University, is editor-in-chief of The American Economist. His books include New Frontiers in Economics, coedited with Lall Ramrattan, with a Foreword by Paul A. Samuelson (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Aron A. Gottesman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Finance and Economics Department, Lubin School of Business, Pace University, is coauthor of Insurance Logic, Second Edition (Captus Press, 2005). Lall Ramrattan, Ph.D. teaches Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Reflections of Eminent Economists, coedited with Michael Szenberg (Elgar Publishing Co., 2004).