Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson passed away yesterday. He was 94.
The economic pioneer revolutionized the field of economics with a mathematical approach to economics outlined in his 1948 book “Economics: An Introductory Analysis.” Despite his Keynesian beliefs, our understanding of public goods today is largely attributable to his work. And he is also famous for a critique of minimum wage, commenting during the civil rights wars, “What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2.00 per hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?”
Samuelson, the uncle of former Treasury Secretary and current White House National Economic Council director Larry Summers, began teaching at MIT in 1940 when he was just 26, and remained at the Institute for over 50 years.