PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF PAUL SAMUELSON AND MODERN ECONOMIC THEORY, INSCRIBED BY PAUL SAMUELSON TO ECONOMIST PHIL KLEIN

(SAMUELSON, Paul Anthony) BROWN, E. Cary and SOLOW, Robert M., editors. Paul Samuelson and Modern Economic Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, (1983). Octavo, original blue paper boards, original dust jacket.

First edition, presentation copy, of this collection of ten essays analyzing Nobel Prize-winner Samuelson’s work in economics, boldly inscribed on the title page to a fellow economist: “For Phil Klein, Paul A Samuelson, Princeton ’85.”

Based on Samuelson’s 1941 doctoral dissertation at Harvard, Foundations in Economic Analysis is one of the most influential economic texts of the 20th century. “More than anyone else he bears responsibility for the mathematical bent of economics in the late 20th century… His doctoral dissertation is regarded by most economists as providing the mathematical foundations for contemporary economics… In all his professional work, Samuelson sought to provide mathematical underpinnings for economic ideas, believing that economic theory without formalizations was unsystematic and unclear” (Pressman, Fifty Major Economists, 162-63). The title of this work “was meant to be exactly as ambitious as it sounds, and the book’s impact on the profession has largely justified it… For the first time in a book in English on economic principles, the mathematics, instead of being relegated to an appendix, provided the skeleton of the argument… Fifty years after it was written, the Foundations (together with Hicks’ Value and Capital) is still one of the most inspiring classics of general equilibrium economics (Niehans, History of Economic Theory, 423). Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970, Samuelson remains “one of the two or three best-known and most respected economists during the last half of the 20th century” (Pressman, 166). This copy was inscribed to Penn State economist Phil Klein, who specialized in institutional economics and business cycles. Klein was known for his fervent belief that economics existed to make the lives of people better and that inequalities should be challenged.

Tiny water spot to signature. Book fine, dust jacket near-fine with only slight rubbing to extremities. A lovely copy, scarce signed.