Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Arrow (2008)

Kenneth Joseph Arrow (born August 23, 1921 in New York City , † February 21, 2017 in Palo Alto ) was an American economist . In 1972 , he and John Richard Hicks received the Swedish Reichsbank's Economics Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel .

Life

Arrow was born in New York in 1921 as the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania . After finishing school in Manhattan , he first studied at the City College of New York with the aim of becoming a math teacher in secondary school. In 1940 Arrow graduated from there as a bachelor's degree in social sciences with a focus on mathematics and moved to Columbia University , from which he also received his master's degree in mathematics in 1941. After Arrow took a liking to mathematical economics during this time, he continued his graduate studies at the business school. Due to the Second World War , however, this was initially interrupted. Arrow was deployed to the Air Force Weather Service, where he was responsible for creating rain forecasts based on historical weather data. In 1946 he returned to Columbia. For financial reasons, he considered moving into the private sector as an actuary, but ultimately decided to continue his academic career. In 1947 he joined a research group at the University of Chicago . The later years of his graduate studies led Arrow to Stanford University , where he also worked as an Acting Assistant Professor of Economics and Statistics from 1949. With his dissertation Social Choice and Individual Values , supervised by Albert Hart , with which Arrow laid the foundation for a new branch of economic theory, he received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1951.

At Stanford, Arrow was soon appointed to a professorship for economics and statistics (later also for operations research ). In 1968 Arrow accepted a position at Harvard University . In 1979 he returned to Stanford, where he was henceforth Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research. In 1991 Arrow retired.

In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1968 to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . In 1972, at the age of 51, Arrow was the youngest ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyzes of the possibility of economic equilibrium and his introduction and successful application of complex mathematical methods in economics. A year later he was the American Economic Association as president-elect before. In 1980 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . Since 1976 he has been a corresponding member of the British Academy . In 1986 he received the John von Neumann Theory Prize .

Arrow died in Palo Alto on February 21, 2017 at the age of 95.

research

Impossibility theorem

In 1951 Arrow published the Arrow theorem named after him as part of his doctoral thesis Social Choice and Individual Values . It shows that it is impossible to establish a set of rules by which societal decisions can be made about a number of reasonable criteria.

The impossibility theorem stands at the beginning of modern social choice theory , which deals with the possibilities, requirements and limits of how collective decisions are to be made on the basis of individual preferences or values.

In contrast to earlier research, Arrow did not try to work out a specific decision-making process, but rather postulated certain criteria that an acceptable or sensible decision-making process would have to meet and tried, through this axiomatization, to limit the number of fundamentally possible processes, which could then be used for further investigations could focus.

Surprisingly, however, it turned out that even a few sensible and harmless conditions (such as the weak Pareto principle and the prohibition of an absolute dictatorship ) were incompatible, i.e. no such procedure existed - and of course certainly none Procedure that would be subject to further requirements.

Research in this area was continued by Amartya Sen, among others .

Environmental economics

From the 1990s onwards, Arrow devoted itself increasingly to environmental economics, especially in collaboration with the Stockholm Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics . He was one of the authors of one of the most influential articles in the field, Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity, and the Environment , published in Science in 1995 . In this and other articles he takes a position critical to growth and tries to develop alternative welfare indicators ( comprehensive wealth ).

Health economics

Kenneth Arrow was also one of the leading founders of health economics . With his article Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care , published in the American Economic Review in 1963 , he addressed numerous issues that have led to extensive research activities in this area.

Publications (selection)

• Social Choice and Individual Values . John Wiley and Sons, New York 1951.
• Where organization ends: Management at the limit of what is possible . Gabler, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-409-96571-8 .

See also

• Arrow Pratt measure
• Arrow-Debreu equilibrium model

literature

• Ross M. Starr: Arrow, Kenneth Joseph (born 1921) . In: Steven N. Durlauf, Lawrence E. Blume (Eds.): The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics . 2nd Edition. 2008, doi : 10.1057 / 9780230226203.0060 .
• Kumaraswamy Velupillai: Kenneth J. Arrow (1921-2017). In: Nature . Volume 543, No. 7647, 2017, p. 624, doi: 10.1038 / 543624a

Web links

Commons : Kenneth Arrow  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Literature by and about Kenneth Arrow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the award of the 1972 award to Kenneth Arrow
• Arrows website at Stanford University

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Michael M. Weinstein: Kenneth Arrow, Nobel-Winning Economist Whose Influence Spanned Decades, Dies at 95th New York Times, February 21, 2017, accessed on February 22, 2017 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Megan McDonough: Kenneth Arrow, Nobel laureate and seminal economist with wide impact, dies at 95th Washington Post, February 21, 2017, accessed February 22, 2017 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Starr,  Arrow, Kenneth Joseph (born 1921) , 2008, op.cit.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Kenneth J. Arrow - Biographical. The Nobel Foundation, 2005, accessed February 22, 2017 . 
5. ↑ Member History: Kenneth J. Arrow. American Philosophical Society, accessed April 13, 2018 (English, with short biography). 
6. ^ Past and Present Officers. aeaweb.org ( American Economic Association ), accessed October 28, 2015 . 
7. ↑ Historic Fellows of the AAAS: Kenneth J. Arrow. (No longer available online.) American Association for the Advancement of Science, archived from the original on April 13, 2018 ; accessed on April 13, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed April 30, 2020 .