Solow biography
Robert Solow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1987 “for his contributions to the theory of economic growth.” His first major paper on growth was “A Contribution to the Theory of Growth.” In it he presented a mathematical model of growth that was a version of the Harrod-Domar growth model (see roy f. harrod). The main difference between his model and the Harrod-Domar model lay in Solow’s assumption that wages could adjust to keep labor fully employed. Out the window went the Harrod-Domar conclusion that the economy was on a knife edge.
Solow soon followed that paper with another pioneering article, “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function.” Before it was published, economists had believed that capital and labor were the main causes of economic growth. But Solow showed that half of economic growth cannot be accounted for by increases in capital and labor. This unaccounted-for portion of economic growth—now called the “Solow residual”—he attributed to technological innovation. His article originated “sources-of-growth accounting,” which economists use to estimate the separate effects on economic growth of labor, capital, and technological change.
Solow also was the first to develop a growth model with different vintages of capital. The idea was that because capital is produced based on known technology, and because technology is improving, new capital is more valuable than old capital.
A keynesian, Solow has been a witty critic of economists ranging from interventionists like Marxist economists and john kenneth galbraith to relatively noninterventionist economists such as milton friedman. Solow once wrote that Galbraith’s disdain for ordinary consumer goods “reminds one of the Duchess who, upon acquiring a full appreciation of sex, asked the Duke if it were not perhaps too good for the common people.” Of Milton Friedman, Solow wrote, “Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of th American economist (1924–2023) Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; August 23, 1924 – December 21, 2023) was an American economist and Nobel laureate whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He was Institute ProfessorEmeritus of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a professor from 1949 on. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1961, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1987, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Four of his PhD students, George Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Diamond, and William Nordhaus, later received Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences in their own right. Robert Solow was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family on August 23, 1924, the oldest of three children. He attended local public school and excelled academically early in life. In September 1940, Solow went to Harvard College with a scholarship at the age of 16. At Harvard, his first studies were in sociology and anthropology as well as elementary economics. In 1942, Solow left the university and joined the U.S. Army. Because he was fluent in German, the Army put him on a task force whose primary purpose was to intercept, interpret, and send back German messages to base. He served briefly in North Africa and Sicily, and later in Italy until he was discharged in August 1945. Shortly after returning, he proceeded to marry his girlfriend, Barbara Lewis (died 2014), whom he had been dating for six weeks. Solow returned to Harvard in 1945, and studied under Wassily Leontief. As Leontief's research assistant he produced the first set of capital-coefficients for the input–output model. Then he became interested in statistics Home from the war, on to MIT Robert Merton Solow was born on August 23, 1924, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father was a fur merchant. A standout student from early on, Solow skipped two grades in school, and earned a scholarship to attend Harvard University at age 16, in 1940. Two years later, after the U.S. had entered World War Two, Solow enlisted in the U.S. Army. Having learned some German in college, Solow spent much of his wartime service in Italy in seemingly risky circumstances, working in a company intercepting German radio signals, in specially equipped trucks just behind the front. When the Allies won the war, he re-entered Harvard in 1945. Late that summer, Solow married Barbara “Bobby” Lewis, a Radcliffe College student whose interest in economics helped spur his own entry into the field. In short order, Solow finished his undergraduate degree and completed Harvard’s PhD program in economics, producing a PhD thesis on new methods of studying income inequality. When Solow joined the MIT Department of Economics in 1949, it was a small program largely oriented around teaching. However, one faculty member, Paul Samuelson, was in the process of overhauling large portions of economics with his emphasis on mathematical rigor and formal analysis. Samuelson and Solow, along with many colleagues from these early days — including Charles Kindleberger, Harold Freeman ’31, Cary Brown, Robert Bishop, and George Shultz PhD ’49, the future U.S. secretary of state — helped the program grow and thrive, while it added luminaries such as Franco Modigliani. By 1960, the MIT department was considered to be at the top of the discipline. It was also considered to be an informal, open, student-friendly place — “the happiest economics department,” as a visiting professor from Harvard termed it. Solow often attributed that to Samuelson’s own lack of airs, telling an M Robert M. Solow is a notable American economist and a Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Solow was a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1987. Solow is best known for his work on growth theory; he helped to develop the Solow-Swan Neo-Classical Growth Model, a groundbreaking theory within economics. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 for his outstanding contributions to economic theory and practice. Solow was born in Brooklyn in 1924 and won a scholarship to Harvard University at the age of sixteen. In 1942, Solow left Harvard to join the U.S. Army; he served in World War II in North Africa and Sicily before returning to Harvard in 1945. As a student at Harvard, Solow became a research assistant under professor and economist Wassily Leontief, and he made contributions to the input-output analysis method in economics, which Leontief helped develop. In 1949, he was awarded a fellowship at Columbia; soon after, he became an assistant professor at MIT. At MIT, Solow had an office located next door to Paul Samuelson, another prominent economist. Later, Sa Robert Solow
Biography
Institute Professor Emeritus Robert Solow, pathbreaking economist, dies at age 99
Robert M. Solow: Who he was, Contributions
Who Is Robert M. Solow?
Key Takeaways
Understanding Robert M. Solow