Speaker: Robert Solow (MIT), Nobel laureate in Economics (1987)
About the speaker: Robert M. Solow, Institute Professor, emeritus, and Professor of Economics, emeritus, is considered to be one of the founders of modern neoclassical economics. He utilized determinants of economic growth to be separated out into increases in inputs and technical progress. Using his model, he calculated that about four-fifths of the growth in U.S. output per worker was attributable to technical progress. Solow also was the first to develop a growth model with different vintages of capital.

In September 1940, Solow began his undergraduate coursework at Harvard, where he studied sociology and anthropology as well as elementary economics. By the end of 1942, Solow left the university and joined the U.S. Army. He served briefly in North Africa and Sicily, and later served in Italy during World War II until he was discharged in August 1945.

He returned to Harvard in 1945, and studied under Wassily Leontief. As his research assistant he produced the first set of capital-coefficients for the input-output model. Subsequently, he became interested in statistics and probability models. From 1949-50, he spent a fellowship year at Columbia University to study statistics more intensively. During that year he was also working on his Ph.D. thesis, an exploratory attempt to model changes in the size distribution of wage income using interacting Markov processes for employment-unemployment and wage rates.

In 1949, just before leaving for Columbia, he was offered and accepted an Assistant Professorship in the MIT Economics Department, where he taught courses in statistics and econometrics. Professor Solow's interest gradually changed to Macroeconomics. For almost 40 years, he and his colleague Paul Samulenson worked together on many landmark theories: von Neumann growth theory, capital theory, linear programming, and the Phillips Curve.

Professor Solow held several government positions, including Senior Economist for the Council of Economic Advisers, and member of the President's Commission on Income Maintenance (1968-70). He won the 1961 American Economic Associations John Bates Clark award in 1961, and the Nobel Prize in 1987 for his analysis of economic growth. Solow also received the National Medial of Science in 1999.