JAMES TOBIN - PAMPHLET SIGNED - HFSID 182113

JAMES TOBIN

The Nobel Prize-Winner and economic advisor of US President John F Kennedy signs an article of his authorship entitled “Lives of the Laureates” in black ink

Pamphlet Signed: “James Tobin” in black ink. 11x8½. Twelve Pages. Title: “Lives of the Laureates”. In part: “Beginning with Keynes at Harvard. Rare is the child, I suspect, who wants to grow up to be an economist, or a professor. I grew up in a university town and went to a university-run high school, where most of my friends were faculty kids. I was so unfailing A student that it was boring even to me. But I don't recall thinking of an academic career. I liked journalism, my father's occupation; I had put out “newspapers” of my own from age six. I thought of law; I loved to argue, and beginning in my teens I was fascinated by politics. I guess I knew that there was economics at the university, but I didn't know what the subject really was. Of course, economic issues were always coming up in classes on history and government-civics, in those days. I expected economics to be among the social science courses I would someday take in college, probably part of the pre-law curriculum. I grew up happily assuming I would go to college in my hometown, to the University of Illinois. One month before I was scheduled to enroll as a freshman, I was offered and accepted a Conant Prize Fellowship at Harvard…”.James Tobin (1918-2002) was an American economist whose alma mater was Harvard University. During 1961 and 1962 he served as a member of President John F. Kennedy's Council of Economic Advisors, under the chairman Walter Heller, then worked as a consultant between1962-1968. In close collaboration with Arthur Okun, Robert Solow and Kenneth Arrow he helped design the Keynesian economic policy implemented by the Kennedy administration. James Tobin also served for several terms as a member of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System Academic Consultants and as a consultant of the US Treasury Department. He was a professor at Harvard and Yale Universities who not only developed the ideas of Keynesian economics but also advocated government intervention to stabilize output and avoid recessions. His academic work included pioneering contributions to study of investment, monetary and fiscal policy and financial markets. Tobin also proposed an econometric model for censored endogenous variables that is well-known as “Tobit model”. James Tobin received the Noble Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1981. He was widely known for his idea of a tax on foreign exchange transactions, now known as the “Tobin tax”; it was designed to reduce speculation in the international currency markets, which he considered dangerous and unproductive. Edges slightly creased. Otherwise, fine condition.