The Great Economists

Chapter 8

Paul Samuelson – the neoclassical synthesist

I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws – or crafts its advanced treaties – if I can write its economics textbooks.’

Paul Samuelson, Foreword to The Principles of Economics Course: A Handbook for Instructors, 1990

In the official speech awarding the Nobel Prize in economic sciences to Paul Samuelson in 1970, Professor Assar Lindbeck, of the Stockholm School of Economics, said that more than any other contemporary economist, the new laureate had contributed to raising the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. ‘He has in fact simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory,’ he said.

Samuelson’s longstanding contribution to economic theory and practice rests ...