Robert Solow biography. Robert Solow; Nobel Prize Laureate. See what "Solow Robert" is in other dictionaries

Brief biographical information

Note 1

Robert Merton Solow (born 1924) is an American economist and Nobel laureate.

Solow was born in Brooklyn into a Jewish family of a fur trader who had recently emigrated from Russia.

Solow did well at school and was one of the best students. After graduating high school, he entered Harvard University, studying sociology and anthropology from 1940 to 1942.

At the end of 1942, Robert Solow entered the military service and was sent to North Africa and then to Sicily. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of Italy as part of the Anglo-American forces. Robert Solow served in signal intelligence because he knew Morse code well and German. In August 1945, Solow was discharged from the army and continued his studies at Harvard University.

After receiving his bachelor's (1947) and master's degrees (1949) from Harvard University, Solow continued his studies at Columbia University (1949 - 1950). In 1951 he received his doctorate from Harvard.

Solow became a full professor in 1958, a full professor in 1973, and a professor emeritus in 1995 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Robert Solow was engaged in teaching, which he began in 1949 as an assistant professor of statistics in the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1968 to 1969 he taught at Oxford University.

Solow was also involved in government activities: from 1961 to 1962, he served as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, and from 1668 to 1970, he was a member of the President's Commission on Income Support. In addition, Solow served as economic adviser to Presidents J. Kennedy, L. Johnson and R. Nixon. From 1975 to 1980, he was a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, and in the last year of this term he headed it.

Solow was appointed president of the Econometric Society in 1964, the American Economic Association in 1979, and the International Economic Association from 1999 to 2002. In 1972 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Robert Solow is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, Yale Tulane, Warwick (England), Geneva (Switzerland), Paris (Sorbonne) University, Brown University and several American colleges.

Contribution to economic development

Note 2

Robert Solow is the 1987 Nobel laureate for basic research in the field of economic growth theory."

Research on economic growth has been particularly relevant in post-war period, since the process of economic recovery has begun in the economically developed countries And economic development in former colonies that have become independent. Therefore, in the 1950s, growth theory became the most popular direction among economic scientists. Of course, before Solow, other scientists were engaged in developments in this scientific field, but no significant conclusions were obtained. According to Solow, Marxist economics is completely outdated.

• "Contributions to Growth Theory" (1956);
• "Technical change and the aggregate production function" (1957).

These articles formed the basis for a macroeconomic model that takes into account the technological parameter in economic growth. This model is known in economic theory like neoclassical "Solow model".

In addition, Robert Solow published in 1958, in collaboration with R. Dorfman and P. Samuelson, the work "Linear programming and economic analysis", where he applied the Phillips curve to the US economy. In 1969, Solow's textbook “Growth Theory: A Version of Presentation” was published. These works laid the foundation for the theory of exogenous growth.

Solow's work had a significant impact on public policy stimulating economic growth – the focus has shifted to increasing funding for technological research and development.

This theory was first presented by R. Solow in the article “Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” (1956), and then developed in the work “Technical Progress and the Aggregate Production Function” (1957). In 1987, the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for its development.

R. Solow proceeds from the fact that a necessary condition for equilibrium economic system is the equality of aggregate demand and aggregate supply. Wherein aggregate supply in his theory is determined on the basis Cobb-Douglas production function, expressing the relationship of functional dependence between the volume of production, on the one hand, and the factors used and their mutual combination, on the other. Solow's theory reveals the relationship between three sources of economic growth - investment, workforce and technological progress.

Theory shows that saving rate (savings) is a key factor determining the level of sustainable capital-to-labor ratio. A higher saving rate provides a larger capital stock, i.e. increase in investment, and therefore more high level production.

Population growth in Solow's theory, this is also one of the reasons for continuous economic growth in a steady state economy. However, if population growth is not accompanied by an increase in investment, this leads to a decrease in the stock of capital per worker. Thus, R. Solow’s theory explains that countries with higher rates of population growth have lower capital ratios, and therefore lower incomes.

The third source of economic growth after investment and employment growth is technical progress . It should be noted that in neoclassical theory, technological progress does not mean the replacement of living labor with machines, but qualitative changes in production, such as increasing the educational level of workers, improving organization, increasing the scale of production, etc.

It is necessary to emphasize that R. Solow came closer and more fully than all his contemporaries, economists, to understanding the economic efficiency of production as a relatively independent factor of economic growth and a material source of social progress in the last quarter of the 20th century. In Solow's theory, technological progress is the only condition for continuous growth in living standards, measured as per capita income. Moreover, R. Solow proposed the formula for the “golden rule of accumulation”, which determines the optimal level of capital-labor ratio. Equilibrium economic growth is compatible with different saving rates, but optimal will be considered exactly the norm that ensures economic growth with maximum level consumption. In contrast to traditional approaches, the highest consumption is determined not by the largest possible amount of capital, but by its optimal size And economic efficiency– capital productivity per unit of product (marginal productivity).

Thus, R. Solow’s theory identifies technical progress as the only basis for sustainable growth of well-being and allows us to find best option growth, ensuring maximum consumption. However, technical progress in the theory of R. Solow is considered as an external (exogenous) factor of economic growth, and therefore does not explain it.

It should be noted that all neoclassical theories of economic growth are constructed using the methodological apparatus production functions.

Thus, neoclassical theories define the following conditions for growth potential: demographic conditions (L); limited income and savings that determine the level of capital (K); scientific and technical potential (A).

Numerous studies carried out within the framework of three factor neoclassical theories of economic dynamics based on the production function, in different periods of time, sometimes showed inconsistent, but always quite high estimates of the contribution of technological progress to ensuring growth rates. R. Solow found that from 1909 to 1949. in the USA, more than 80% of GDP growth was explained by technological progress, i.e. intensive factors, and not the costs of labor and capital.

However, it must be emphasized that neoclassical theories do not explain the dynamics of parameter A. This parameter is an external exogenous factor that cannot be determined within the framework of the theory.

Solow Robert Solow Robert

(Solow) (b. 1924), American economist. Research in the field of econometrics, theory of economic growth. Nobel Prize (1987).

SOLOW Robert

Robert Solow (b. August 23, 1924, New York), American economist, Nobel Prize laureate 1987.
Years of study. Teaching activities
Born in Brooklyn, into a family of immigrants. He was very successful at school and managed to win a scholarship to a prestigious Harvard College, where he entered in 1940. Sociology, anthropology, the beginnings of economic theory - that’s what initially fascinated the future Nobel laureate. However, in 1942 he left Harvard and joined the active army. North Africa, Sicily - this is the geography of his movements until August 1945, after which he returns to the USA. The famous American economist of Russian origin V.V. Leontiev becomes his teacher, mentor and even friend. (cm. LEONTIEV Vasily Vasilievich) As his assistant, Solow took part in the first calculations of capital coefficients for inter-industry balances. Columbia University played an important role in his education, where he spent a year (1949-1950) studying statistics and probability theory. After completing his studies and defending his doctoral dissertation, he becomes a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( cm. ) .
Like many outstanding US economists, Solow fruitfully combined scientific teaching with participation in the work of a number of state or semi-state institutions that had a significant impact on economic policy countries. In particular, in 1961-1962 he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under the President, and in 1975-1981 - a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Scientific contribution
Solow's scientific contribution to the development of modern economic growth theory is generally recognized. The essence of this theory is to substantiate the relationship and interaction of the main national economic (macroeconomic) categories that determine the growth rate of national income and their sustainability over short and long periods of time.
Solow, like many of his contemporaries, began to work with models whose decisive premise was the traditional postulate of neoclassical theory (cm. NEOCLASSICAL DIRECTION) about the enduring importance of the price mechanism, ensuring economic equilibrium not only in commodity markets, but also in capital and labor markets. It is this mechanism that determines equilibrium sustainable economic growth. Neoclassical models of economic growth entered the economic literature under the name of production functions, where the growth of national income is determined not only by one factor - investment or capital, but by two - the volume of capital and the size of the labor force. Moreover, the price ratio of these factors can change the combination of the quantities of these factors themselves, and, consequently, a certain flexibility in their adaptation to changing economic conditions.
Research on the role of technological progress
Production functions have become widely used in econometric research (cm. ECONOMETRICS) by assessing the role of the “contribution” of each factor to economic growth. And yet the entire increase in national income was inexplicable only by the growth in the volume of capital and labor employed; there remained an “unexplained remainder.” It was he who attracted Solow's attention. Analyzing American data over a long period of time (1909-1919), he came to the conclusion that during this time only 12.5% ​​of the increase in labor productivity was due to an increase in the capital-labor ratio, and 87.5% represented the same unexplained remainder that he called "technical change". This marked the beginning of the study of the role of the most important factor of economic growth - technical progress.
Building optimal growth models
But this stage of research also gave rise to its doubts. After all, these calculations were based on the idea of ​​so-called “non-materialized” or “non-embodied” technical progress in investments.
These doubts served as an impetus for the development of models of embodied, or materialized, technological progress. In this direction, an important methodological role was played by Solow's work, published in 1962, in which the scientist proceeded from the hypothesis that new technology could be introduced into the production process only through gross investment in new construction and equipment. Solow proposed a new production function, main feature which consisted of a special method for calculating the amount of capital. The latter was adjusted to increase its productivity, based on the assumption that each new generation of capital investments, on the basis of which the capital stock is calculated, is more productive than the previous one. In this way, the value of the capital stock was calculated taking into account its quality, which naturally increased the “contribution” of capital to the rate of economic growth.
Paying tribute to the construction of various models of optimal growth, Solow in last years returns to the problem of stable growth, deviations from equilibrium conditions, as well as issues of economic policy.
He is the author of many fundamental works on the problems of economic growth, on the theory of capital, profit and unemployment. Solow is recognized in scientific circles not only in his country, but abroad, and is an honorary member of many academies and universities.
In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .

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Books

• Economic Growth, Barro Robert J, Sala-i-Martin Javier, The book explores issues related to economic growth, neoclassical and more recent theories of growth. The second edition is seriously revised, expanded in relation to... Category: Economics Publisher: Binom. Knowledge Laboratory,
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American economist known for his research into the theory of economic growth. The result of the research was the “Solow model” - a unique model that describes the principles of exogenous economic growth based on technical progress, labor and capital. For his research, Solow was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Solow was born in Brooklyn, New York (Brooklyn, New York), into a Jewish family; he was the eldest of three children. Robert studied at a local public school; From his earliest years, studying came quite easily to him. In September 1940, Solow entered Harvard College on a scholarship; He concentrated on research in the fields of sociology, anthropology and elementary economics.

At the end of 1942, Robert left the university and joined the American army. Solow spent some time in North Africa and Sicily; During World War II, Robert fought in Italy. In August 1945, Solow left the army and returned to Harvard. His new mentor was Vasily Leontief himself; It was as his assistant that Robert carried out his first truly major studies and calculated the first set of capital intensity ratios for the input-output balance. Subsequently, Solow became interested in statistics and probabilistic models; From 1949 to 1950 he worked at Columbia University

ty); He combined the study of statistics with work on his Ph.D. thesis, in which he tried to expand the existing calculation models to take into account the distribution of incoming income using interacting Markov processes to calculate unemployment rates and wages.

In 1949, Robert was offered a position as an assistant professor in the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; there Solow taught courses in econometrics and statistics. Gradually, Robert developed a new hobby - he became seriously interested in macroeconomics. For nearly 40 years, Solow, along with Paul Samuelson, was involved in the creation of a number of significant theories - von Neumann growth theory, capital theory, linear programming and the Phillips curve.

Robert served for some time in various government positions—senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers and member of the President's Commission on Revenue Management. At that time, his research focused on theories

capital, growth policies and unemployment problems.

In 1961, the American Economic Association awarded Robert the John Bates Clark Award as "an outstanding economist under 40 years of age." In 1979, Solow himself was already president of the AEA.

In 1987, Robert Solow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of the principles of economic growth. In 1999, Solow received scientific award- medal "National Medal of Science".

Solow now serves as president of the Courtnot Center for Economic Studies, which he founded in 2000, and serves as one of the trustees of the group Economists for Peace and Security.

The Solow model, also known as the neoclassical Solow-Swan growth model, was discovered back in 1956 by Trevor W. Swan, completely independently of Robert. Subsequently, based on his model, Solow was able to calculate about 4/5 of per capita income in the United States - at least in relation to technical progress

Solow Robert M.

Solow RobertM. (b. 1924)

Robert Solow is best known for his pioneering work on capital theory and economic growth in the fifties and sixties, but he also made, perhaps less prominently, contributions to macroeconomic analysis and economics in more recent times. non-renewable resources. Two of his many articles on the theory of economic growth: “Contribution to the Theory of Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economies, February 1956), and “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function.” Function, Review of Economies and Statistics, August 1957) became a classic, and the persistence of his interest in this problem is evidenced by the auxiliary textbook written at a later time, Growth Theory: an Exposition, Oxford University Press, 1969. . Even earlier, Solow, together with Dorfman and Samuelson, wrote the book Linear Programming and Economic Analysis (McGraw-Hill, 1958), which played a huge role in making new post-war achievements in the theory of economic growth available to young economists.

Solow's paper "Contributions to Growth Theory" was the first "neoclassical" version of the Harrod-Domar model of economic growth, in the sense that in his model capital and labor are interchangeable, and ultimately the path of economic growth is the path to full employment. Similarly, the article “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function” marked the emergence of the so-called “growth accounting”(sources-of-growth accounting) ( cm . Denison E.), what the a short time has led to an almost endless string of estimates of aggregate production functions that attempt to separate the contribution to economic growth of increases in labor and capital from the contribution of improvements in technology (see Douglas IL). Developing the theory of economic growth, Solow in a number of articles developed “age models” of growth, in which capital is valued not only in terms of its size, but also in terms of its age structure, with new capital goods valued higher than old ones.

“Capital Theory and the Rate of Return” (North-Holland, 1963) is another brilliant example of Solow’s work, in which the author showed that many long-standing problems of capital theory are the result of incorrectly placed emphases: for the theory of capital it is important not so much its measurement, as many economists claim (see Robinson J.), but how the rate of return on capital is determined, which depends solely on the nominal, and not on the real price of capital. In addition, Solow was a frequent and brilliant commentator on the work of other economists, especially those who criticized the achievements of mainstream economic thought; he was also Samuelson's main ally in his opposition to the views of Robinson and Kaldor during the period of the great "Cambridge Controversy" (see Pasinetti L.). A relatively recent publication by Solow is “The Labor Market as social institution"(The Labor Market as a Social Institution, Basil Blackwell, 1990) surprised readers by the author's willingness to admit that labor markets are unique in the sense that they adapt to normal economic pressures only to a very small extent.

Solow was born in 1924. in NYC. He received his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees from Harvard University in 1947, 1949, and 1951, respectively. His work at MIT as a professor of economics, which began in 1950 and was interrupted by only one year during which Solow taught at Oxford University (1968-69), continues to this day. For five years he was first a member and then chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (1975-80). In 1961, when the scientist was 37 years old, the American Economic Association awarded him the John Bates Clark Medal 1 . In 1964, Solow was president of the Econometric Society, and in 1979, president

American Economic Association. He received honorary degrees from many American and European universities. In 1987, his contribution to economic development was recognized with the Nobel Prize.

Literature

R. Solow. My Evolution as an Economiste in the book . W. Breit and R. W. Spencer (eds). Lives of the Lauréates: Ten Nobel Economists (MIT Press, 1990); R. Solow. Notes on Coping, in the book . M. Szenberg (ed.). Eminent Economists (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Literature in Russian

Solow R. M. Economic theory of resources or resources of economic theory. Lecture in honor of Richard T. Ely // Milestones of Economic Thought. Volume 3. Factor markets. Under general ed. V. M. Galperin. SPb: Economic School. 2000.

Solow R. M. Theory of growth // Panorama of economic thought of the end XX centuries. Ed. D. Greenaway, M. Bleaney, I. Stewart. Per. from English, ed.V. S. Avtonomova. Volume 1. St. Petersburg: Economic School. 2002.

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1 0 John Bates Clare medal, see art. Boulding Kenneth - approx. ed.