Arrow, Kenneth Joseph, 1921–2017, American economist, b. New York City, grad. City College of New York (B.S. 1940), Columbia (M.A. 1941, Ph.D. 1951). He was on the faculties of the Univ. of Chicago (1947–49), Stanford (1949–68, 1979–91), and Harvard (1968–79), was a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers (1962), and was a consultant for the RAND Corp. from 1948. A specialist in welfare economics and general equilibrium theory, he shared the 1972 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Sir John Richard Hicks. Although Arrow's work on general equilibrium theory showed that a market economy was efficient, the conclusion was valid under limited ideal circumstances, and in many instances his later work examined aspects of the economy where imperfect situations exist. Arrow's publications include Social Choice and Individual Values (2d ed. 1963), Aspects of the Theory of Risk-Bearing (1965), General Competitive Analysis (1972), and The Economics of Information (1984); he has also edited Barriers to Conflict Resolution (1995) and Increasing Returns and Economic Analysis (1998).
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