Lives of the laureates provides a condensed and personalized history of modern economic thought, with some of the most eloquent and important contributors to that history as guides.
Of the twenty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics, twelve have been American. Here seven of these Nobel laureates—Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, Arthur Lewis, Lawrence Klein, James Tobin, George Stigler, and Kenneth Arrow—describe their own personal and professional development in a series of essays that illustrates the diversity and richness of contemporary economic thought in America.
The essays reveal the process by which original ideas are germinated and eventually accepted in a discipline. They show the extent to which scholarly work reflects the lives of its creators; the role of influential teachers and colleagues; and how the economic problems thes men have grappled with reflect the social problems of their times.