Nationality American | Occupation Economist | |
Born February 4, 1926 (age 91) ( 1926-02-04 ) Budapest, Hungary Education Massachusetts Institute of Technology | ||
Thomas Vietorisz (born February 4, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary) is an American economist who specialized in urban planning.
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Education
Thomas Vietorisz completed his undergraduate studies at Budapest, Basel, and Zurich. He received a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering (1948) and a Ph.D. (1956) in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Teaching
From 1963-1995, he worked in the Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research at NYC, where he was the Department Chair (1977), Senior Lecturer (1990-1994), and Professor Emeritus (1995). Since 1996, he has been an adjunct Professor at Columbia University in NYC, NY. Earlier positions include adjunct Professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (1970-1973; 1977–present).
Economics
Vietorisz worked with applied and theoretical economics. An early example of his theoretical contributions is his method to quantize for priority ordering of projects in planning. Another example is his theory of "Decentralization in NonConvex System" that was highlighted in "Econometrica." The aim was to represent two-level planning and decision making system within the traditional Edgeworth box diagram, but extended for nonconvex analysis.
An example of a practical suggestion is discussed in his challenge of the substitution-based theory for setting the US minimum wage rate, which came under discussion in the forum of the journal “Challenge”. In that forum, McCulloch raised the question as to where the other factors of production will come from to support an increase in the minimum wage. Vietorisz proposed that there were historic precedents to show that government-assisted loans were a possible source, and that in the case of the agricultural sector, there was no shortage of land since some was being taken out of cultivation through subsidy programs. In short, McCulloch argued from the neoclassical perspective; Vietorisz, from the Dual Labor Market and Moral perspectives. The two different paradigms to view the issue of minimum wage are still being reconciled in the literature.