How Solow became an economist

The late Robert Solow was a giant among economists. When he was 98 years old he told Steve about cracking German codes in World War II, why it’s so hard to reduce inequality, and how his field lost its way. 

• SOURCES:
  • Robert Solow, professor emeritus of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Secrecy, Cigars, and a Venetian Wedding: How the P.G.A. Tour Made a Deal with Saudi Arabia," by Alan Blinder, Lauren Hirsch, Kevin Draper, and Kate Kelly (The New York Times, 2023).
  • "Global Assessment of Environmental-Economic Accounting and Supporting Statistics: 2020," by United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (2021).
  • "Where Modern Macroeconomics Went Wrong," by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2015).
  • "As Inequality Grows, So Does the Political Influence of the Rich," (The Economist, 2018).
  • "Big Bang Financial Deregulation and Income Inequality: Evidence From U.K. and Japan," by Daniel Waldenstrom and Julia Tanndal (VoxEU, 2016).
  • "The Fall And Rise Of U.S. Inequality, In 2 Graphs," by Quoctrung Bui (Planet Money, 2015).
  • Nobel Prize Biographical, by Robert Solow (1987).
  • Principles of Political Economy, by John Stuart Mills (1848).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Is Economic Growth the Wrong Goal? (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).

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