A Big Thinker's Event - "Facing a Long and Uncertain Future" by Kenneth Arrow

Abstract

Many allocation decisions require costs today (or, at least, beginning today ) with benefits extending into the distant future, affecting lives not yet in existence. The leading example today is policy to meet anthropogenic climate change, but that problem is by no means unique. How do we think about the balancing of values? To some extent, the questions have to do with empirical regularities, but to a major extent, they depend on value judgments about our obligations to future generations. The decisions are further complicated by uncertainties about the future.

About Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth J. Arrow is Professor Emeritus of Economics and of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Policy Research and of the Center for Health Policy. He has taught at Stanford University, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago, and has been a Visiting Professor or Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Churchill College (Cambridge), All Souls College (Oxford), and the University of Sienna. He has taught microeconomic theory, mathematical statistics, econometrics, income distribution, and the history of economic thought.


Dr. Arrow graduated from The City College (1940) and received an M. A. (mathematics, 1941) and Ph. D. (econmics, 1951) from Columbia University. He is the author of 21 books and 265 papers in learned journals. His principal research fields were social choice, general equilibrium, economics of uncertainty and information, inventory theory, optimal growth with special reference to environmental constraints, health economics, and the economics of innovation.


He has received several honors, including the John Bates Clark Medal (American Economic Association), Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, National Medal of Science, von Neumann Prize, and Medal of the University of Paris. He has also been President of several professional societies and a member or fellow of several honorary societies. He is especially proud that three students and two close collaborators have won the Nobel Memorial Prize.

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