Hirofumi Uzawa

Hirofumi Uzawa ( Japanese 宇 沢弘文 , Uzawa Hirofumi , born July 21, 1928 in Tottori Prefecture , † September 18, 2014 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese economist and university professor .

Career, research and teaching

Uzawa first studied mathematics at the University of Tokyo before he came into contact with Marxist economic theory after the end of World War II and gave up his ambitions for mathematics in favor of dealing with economics. He joined the research group of economist Hiroshi Furuya in the early 1950s through a teammate in the university's rugby team . He had arranged regular visiting professorships from the United States with Stanford University , and Hendrik Houthakker gave Uzawa insights into the work of Kenneth Arrow and Leonid Hurwicz . After he had sent Arrow an article that suggested an extension of her theory to operations research , he received an invitation to the United States.

From 1956 on, Uzawa worked at Stanford University. At the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science , he was initially a research assistant before he was promoted to Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the course of his training . Influenced by his original Marxist reading and the economic knowledge of Thorstein Veblens and Milton Keynes , he developed a two-sector model for describing economic growth during this time. Lloyd Metzler later brought him to the University of Chicago as a full professor . In 1966 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1969 he returned to the University of Tokyo as a professor, but in the following years was a visiting professor around the world. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1995 .

The focus of Uzawa's work was in the field of economics . With his work he contributed to a formal mathematical description of economic relationships. He published in particular on neoclassical theory and expanded in particular the work of Robert M. Solow and his Solow model , for which Solow was later awarded the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics . He later expanded his research area to include human capital and social capital , with an emphasis on the provision of education and medical care.

Uzawa was one of the scientific advisors to Pope John Paul II in the preparation of his encyclical Centesimus Annus , which in 1991 as a reminiscence of the centenary of the encyclical Rerum Novarum underlined the importance of social policy and a realignment of Catholic social teaching in view of the current events after the collapse of the totalitarian planned economy systems in Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1983 Uzawa was honored as a person with special cultural merits , in 1997 he was awarded the Order of Culture .

Works

The following is a list of books he has published in English, and he has also written numerous Japanese books as well as magazine articles and working papers.

• Studies in Linear and Non-linear Programming with Ken Arrow and Leonid Hurwicz (1958)
• Readings in the Modern Theory of Economic Growth (1968)
• Preference, Production, and Capital: Selected Papers of Hirofumi Uzawa (1988)
• Optimality, Equilibrium, and Growth: Selected Papers of Hirofumi Uzawa (1988)
• Economic Theory and Global Warming (2003)
• Economic Analysis of Social Common Capital (2005)

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Uzawa Hirofumi . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 1671.

Web links

• "An Interview with Hirofumi Uzawa" , Macroeconomic Dynamics 13 (2009), 390-420. doi : 10.1017 / S1365100509080213
• Hirofumi Uzawa in the database of the History of Economic Thought website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Online entry in 日本人 名 大 辞典 , Kōdansha 2009