Paul A. Samuelson : Critical Assessments of Contemporary Economists, 2nd Series

More than any other economist, Paul Anthony Samuelson (1915-) raised the level of mathematical analysis in the profession.

He wrote his first published article, 'A Note on the Measurement of Utility', as a twenty-one-year-old doctoral student at Harvard.

His doctoral dissertation, Foundations of Economic Analysis , published in 1947, became a milestone in the conversion of modern economists to the view that all economic behaviour can be fruitfully studied as the solution to a maximisation problem, explicitly or implicitly employing the mathematics of differential and integral calculus.

It also won him Harvard's David A. Wells Award. He was made full professor at MIT just six years after completing his PhD, where he remained until he retirement in 1986.

He won numerous prizes and honours in his lifetime including the Nobel prize for Economics, he regularly contributed to News Week and he acted as economic advisor to President Kennedy. Very much 'the economists' economist', Samuelson published rigorous statements of fundamental concepts and theories in just about every branch of economics, including international trade, consumer theory and welfare economics, production theory, financial analysis, growth theory, macroeconomics, and the history of economic thought.

Samuelson is a key figure in economic thinking and there are few graduate students of economics who have not read and re-read his classical essays.

This collection gathers the essential assessments of this important economist, and provides an unparalleled insight into his lasting impact on economics throughout the last century to the present day.