James Tobin


James Tobin, until his death in March 2002, was Sterling Professor of Economics Emeritus at Yale University. He had been on the Yale faculty since 1950. He received a PhD in economics from Harvard in 1947 and was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows for three years 1947–50, the last of which he spent at the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge, UK. In 1955 the American Economic Association awarded him the John Bates Clark Medal, given to an outstanding economist under age 40. In 1961–62, on leave from Yale, he was a Member of President Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was President of the Econometric Society in 1958, and of the American Economic Association in 1971. In 1981 he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Science. He authored or edited sixteen books and more than four hundred articles. He wrote both for professional readers and for the general public.




Papers Published in World Economics:


James Tobin, 1918–2002
Author: An interview with introduction by Brian Snowdon & Howard Vane

Professor James Tobin, who died on 11 March 2002, was possibly the most eminent of the world’s ‘Keynesian’ economists. Described by Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson as “the archetype of a late-twentieth century American scholar”, Tobin was without doubt one of the most influential economists of his time who inspired a whole generation of students. In this interview, Professor Tobin discusses the progress and development of economics in the second half of the twentieth century.

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