Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist [Paperback]

Michael Szenberg (Author), A Gottesman (Author), Lall Ramrattan (Author), Joseph E Stiglitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2005

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 A. Stiglitz (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

When Jorge Pinto, the CEO of Pinto Books, approached us to write a biography of an economist, we immediately suggested Paul A. Samuelson. Pinto Books has launched a series of beautifully designed books, each profiling one leader in a number of disciplines such as physics, sociology, and medicine. The biographies focus on the discipline through the lens of one outstanding scholar.

The choice of Paul A. Samuelson was easy. He dazzles us with an overwhelming display of learning, insight, energy, aplomb, modesty, profundity, and an amazing inventiveness. He single-handedly revitalized and transformed the discipline of economics. Furthermore, he represents the best that the economics discipline has given us. Through his work, friendship, and fellowship he has touched, and changed unalterably, many lives. Paul A. Samuelson, or PAS as he refers to himself, the master of prose and humor, has a magical ability to connect with an audience, and is admired by the economic community as a whole. It is rare, indeed, to find conversation, correspondence, and scholarship so well blended in one person.

Samuelson blends child-like wonder with the extraordinary wisdom of experience, by continually challenging himself anew. For him, writing is synonymous with life, but never eclipses it. To paraphrase philosopher Martin Buber, the job is to drive the ploughshare of normative principles into the hard soil of positive economics. In this, Samuelson elegantly succeeds.

About the Author

Michael Szenberg, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of Economics and Chair of the Finance and Economics Department at the Lubin School of Business, Pace University, and editor in chief of The American Economist. Szenberg is recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the International Honor Society in Economics, and of the Irving Fisher Monograph Award from the American Economic Association. 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. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Finance and Economics at the Lubin School of Business, Pace University. Gottesman is recipient of the Proposal Release Time Award from Pace University, and of the Northern Finance Association's Best Financial Institutions Paper Award. He is coauthor of Insurance Logic, Second Edition (Captus Press, 2005). Lall Ramrattan, Ph.D. teaches Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His books (coedited with Michael Szenberg) include Reflections of Eminent Economists, with a Foreword by Kenneth Arrow (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2004), and New Frontiers in Economics, with a Foreword by Paul A. Samuelson (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Product Details

• Paperback: 164 pages
• Publisher: Jorge Pinto Books (May 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097426153X
• ISBN-13: 978-0974261539
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,410,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Primer in Economics through the life an economist, July 6, 2005

By 

P. Corrigan (MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist (Paperback)

This is an engaging and readable encomium to Samuelson, a selective history of economic theory and an introduction to economics. Quite an accomplishment in 160 pages!
I particularly enjoyed its informal conversational style and use of personal anecdotes. These really brought the reader to feel privy to important people and events. The text also successfully conveyed the Stiglitz' love of Samuelson - his excellence as a human being, over and above his accomplishments as a theoretician.
Chapters 2 and 3 were quite informative to me, successful introductions to key aspects of the science of economics. In just a couple of pages Stiglitz succeeds in conveying the changes from feudalism to mercantilism to free market in a way which showed why a new understanding of economics was needed. He then goes on to show shortcomings in classical theory which called for Samuelson's contributions. The author's presentation of Samuelson's incorporation of mathematical modeling in economics and the revolution that brought was also clear and interesting.
The sections at the end of each chapter "Additional Notes and Sources" are
very helpful to this reader who is not a professional in economics.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read;however,Samuelson's position isn't clearly stated, December 8, 2005

By 

Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist (Paperback)

I recommend that this book be purchased.It gives an above average to very good overview of the life and times of Paul Samuelson,starting from his days as an undergraduate majoring in economics at the University of Chicago.It does an admirable job in covering the importance of Samuelson's unmatched textbook,Economics,as well as the surrounding historical and political conditions and controversies that occurred during the writing of the book.However,Samuelson's consistent core position concerning the interface between macroeconomics,microeconomics and the economics of Keynes, as expressed by Keynes in the General Theory(1936),in general and,specifically, in section III of chapter 24,is not covered at all.The reader,who finishs this book,will come away without grasping exactly what it was that Samuelson took away from his reading of the GT.It certainly was not Keynes's mathematical model of chapters 19,20, and 21.Samuelson had been convinced by the misleading claims of Richard Kahn,Joan Robinson and Austin Robinson that,while Keynes's new ideas and approach were fundamentally correct,he had made a technical mess of the formal,mathematical expression and exposition of his theory.Nevertheless,Samuelson did have a very deep understanding and appreciation for Keynes's approach,if not his technique. Samuelson viewed the study of economics and macroeconomics as the study of an economy as a whole.An economy is made up of a private sector and a public sector.There are micro-theoretical underpinnings to the decision making calculus in both sectors.Both sectors are vital to realizing the goal of economic growth and prosperity at full employment,non inflationary levels of gross domestic product.Both public goods and private goods are absolutely necessary.The concept of a completely private economy,operating under conditions of laissez faire,is a myth that was completely rejected by the founding fathers of the United States of America in 1787.The standard reference is The Federalist Papers ,written by Hamilton,Madison,and Jay.The economic system,AS A WHOLE,can be made to function as if it were an ergodic system IF,AND ONLY IF, the following policies are followed.These policies will create a stable,full employment level of output.First,an activist and interventionist monetary and fiscal policy is implemented.Second,a progressive taxation system is implemented.Third, continuous government spending on investment on infrastructure projects,public goods,and public works is implemented.These three policies will counterbalance and negate the highly variable,unstable,volatile,insufficient,unpredictable private sector spending on investment in fixed ,durable capital goods(plants,factories,machinery,computer hardware and software,etc.)that occurs due to the uncertainty(D. Ellsberg's ambiguity)of the future in all capitalist economies.Fourth,money wages and prices are sticky.Sticky does not mean rigid or inflexible.Fifth,introduction of more interest,wage,and price flexibility,combined with policies 1,2 and 3,will result in attaining the goal of full employment.The expansion of government to include activist,interventionist monetary and fiscal policy,and increased public sector spending on public goods and infrastructure,necessary to counter the shortfalls in required private sector spending on investment ,will mean that"...if our central controls succeed in establishing an aggregate volume of output corresponding to full employment as nearly as is practicable,the classical theory comes into its own again from this point onwards."(Keynes,1936,p.378).Samuelson has digested this point.His detractors have not.The authors of this book only discuss the strange and incomprehensible objections made by the authors of a two volume book called the Anti-Samuelson(1977)and libertarian anarchists believers in Laissez Faire,like Murray Rothbard and Mark Skousen ,who assume that there is no difference between consumption goods and investment goods or between fixed capital and circulating capital(inventories).Supposedly,investment is a completely stable,predictable function of the long run real rate of interest only.All of the empirical evidence shows that long run investment is not a stable,predictable or nonvolatile function of the real rate of interest.Another strange critic of Samuelson,not mentioned in this book, is Paul Davidson,one of the founders of the Post Keynesian School of economics.Davidson makes the unsupportable charge that Samuelson is not a Keynesian of any type.The reader of this review will discover that Davidson never cites or mentions Keynes's analysis in section III of chapter 24 of the GT whenever he criticizes Samuelson for not being a "true" Keynesian.In fact ,nowhere in the corpus of Davidson's published work ,going back to 1960 ,has Davidson ever dealt with this section of the GT except in dismissive one liners.Finally,none of the other schools of economic thought,such as rational expectations,monetarist,austrian,supply side,or real business cycles,have a clue to the fundamental problem of capitalism.Samuelson,following Keynes,realized that it is the shortfall in investment spending that is the crucial problem in introducing involuntary unemployment into a capitalist economy.Samuelson said it best:"When it comes to investment,the laissez faire system has no good thermostat".No good thermostat means that such an economic system is not self regulating or correcting.The Laissez Faire approach does not lead to full employment unless "we're lucky" .No economist has ever demonstrated theoretically or empirically that the laissez faire system has a good thermostat.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, July 6, 2005

By 

James Digabriele - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist (Paperback)

Paul A. Samuelson: "On Being an Economist" offers the ability for a reader to embark on the life chronicles of PAS with bifocals; a broad view is offered of the influences contributing to Samuelson's master of prose, wit and thrilling ability to connect with an audience while powerfully maintaining focus on the extraordinaire responsible for the revitalization of economics as a discipline. The work projects a well supported analytical approach to the achievements of PAS while successfully encrypted with celebratory views of a legendary career. Furthermore, the narrative's current personifies a conversation with a broad audience of sophisticated, yet non-economist spectators fruitfully ignited by the importance of economic deliberation throughout the 20th Century. Without doubt, this work is a tribute to Samuelson; Praise is offered through an anthological retelling of education, achievement and tribulations ultimately filtering through to the doctrinaire contributing immensely to the study of economics. However, without avail, the style holds constant the ability to flicker economic theory and undoubted utile function in a comprehensible fashion avoiding the typical stray to technical and mathematical models for evidentiary purposes. The meat of the storyline is functionally outlined through Chapters 2 through 4 carrying the reader from Samuelson's philosophy, extrapolating the "mathematical language" of his methodology, and through to the kaleidoscope of Samuelson's celebrity (presenting both praise and criticism). A well captured account of the history behind the history made by Paul A. Samuelson.