Nationality United States Name Harold Demsetz | Fields Managerial economics | |
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Born May 31, 1930 (age 93) ( 1930-05-31 ) Chicago, Illinois Institution UCLA
University of Chicago School or tradition New institutional economics Alma mater Northwestern University
University of Illinois Influences Frank Knight
Armen Alchian
Ronald Coase
Aaron Director
George Stigler Books The economics of the business firm Education University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Northwestern University Influenced by Frank Knight, Armen Alchian, Ronald Coase, Aaron Director, George Stigler | ||
Harold Demsetz (; born May 31, 1930) is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
Contents
Career
Demsetz (1988) includes a short intellectual autobiography.
Demsetz grew up on the West Side of Chicago, the grandchild of immigrants from central and eastern Europe. He studied engineering, forestry, and philosophy at four universities before being awarded a B.A. (1953) in economics from the University of Illinois, and an MBA (1954) and a Ph.D. (1959) from Northwestern University. While a graduate student, he published an article each in Econometrica and the Journal of Political Economy.
Demsetz taught at the University of Michigan (1958–60), UCLA, 1960–63, and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, 1963–71. In 1971, he returned permanently to UCLA's Economics Department, which he chaired 1978–80. He held the Arthur Andersen UCLA Alumni Chair in Business Economics, 1986–95. He has been affiliated with the Center for Naval Analyses and the Hoover Institution.
Demsetz is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a director of the Mont Pelerin Society, and a past (1996) president of the Western Economics Association.
Ideas
Demsetz belongs to the Chicago school of economic theory, and was one of the pioneers of the approach now called New Institutional Economics. He is a founder of the field of managerial economics. He has expanded the theory of property rights now prevalent in law and economics. Even though Demsetz never employed game theory, he is a major figure in industrial organization through his writings on the theory of the firm, antitrust policy, and business regulation. His expository style is devoid of mathematical formalism to an extent unusual for someone who began his career after 1950. His principal influences include Frank Knight and a number of colleagues: Armen Alchian, Ronald Coase, Aaron Director, and George Stigler.
Demsetz was the first to propose emissions trading as a way of giving polluters an economic incentive to reduce their emissions of pollutants. He coined the term "nirvana fallacy" in 1969.
The 1972 Demsetz and Armen Alchian article Production, Information Costs and Economic Organization was selected as one of the twenty most important articles published in the first century of the American Economic Review.