Kenneth J. Arrow Autograph Manuscript Pages Signed.

ARROW, Kenneth J.

Item Number: 117800

Autograph manuscript page signed by and entirely in the hand of Nobel Prize-winning economist Kenneth J. Arrow. One page on lined paper, the manuscript reads, “One economic school of thought has held that agents anticipate correctly all future prices including contingent prices to allow for uncertainty. Hence, it is held, the Arrow-Debreu model correctly analyzes the actual economic world. That has been termed the ‘rational expectations’ view (John Muth, Robert Lucas). It is intellectually attractive and has generated important research, empirical and theoretical. I must nevertheless record my opinion that very important elements of reality are not accounted for by this descendant of my thoughts. There is a subtle but important difference between having complete markets and not having them. In the second case, for example, there will be a market for steel next year, but no market on which steel… ” Signed by Arrow in the upper right corner of the page. Accompanied by a transmittal envelope with Arrow’s Stanford University return address. In fine condition.

One of the most important economists in the second half of the twentieth century, Kenneth Arrow was a major figure in post-World War II neo-classical economic theory. His most significant works are his contributions to social choice theory, notably "Arrow's impossibility theorem", and his work on general equilibrium analysis. He has also provided foundational work in many other areas of economics, including endogenous growth theory and the economics of information. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959 and was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972, still the youngest person to receive that prize at the age of 51. He was the recipient of the 2004 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor, presented by President George W. Bush for his contributions to research on the problem of making decisions using imperfect information and his research on bearing risk. His contributions to the general equilibrium theory were strongly influenced by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.