Paul Samuelson, R.I.P.


Oh, my. Paul Samuelson has died. He had a long, good life; yet he will be sorely missed.

It’s hard to convey the full extent of Samuelson’s greatness. Most economists would love to have written even one seminal paper — a paper that fundamentally changes the way people think about some issue. Samuelson wrote dozens: from international trade to finance to growth theory to speculation to well, just about everything, underlying much of what we know is a key Samuelson paper that set the agenda for generations of scholars.

And he was a wonderfully down-to-earth human being besides. For a number of years I shared an office suite with him and Bob Solow; he always had time to talk, and was completely without airs.

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