who was kenneth arrow 
kenneth arrow 1921 2017 was an american neoclassical economist who won the nobel memorial prize in economics along with john hicks in 1972 for his contributions to general equilibrium analysis and welfare economics 1arrow s research has also explored the social choice theory endogenous growth theory collective decision making the economics of information and the economics of racial discrimination among other topics 2understanding kenneth arrowborn in new york city in 1921 kenneth arrow taught at stanford university harvard and the university of chicago he earned his ph d from columbia university with a dissertation that discussed his theorem called the general impossibility theorem 3 arrow determined in this theorem that results could not be decided fairly during an election that s because he stated ideal voting methods did not exist when there are more than two candidates trying to satisfy certain criteria arrow outlined the criteria as follows the application of arrow s general impossibility theorem has gone beyond democracy and election results it has been used for both welfare economics and social justice and linked to the liberal paradox which was developed by economist amartya sen according to sen and his paradox there is generally a conflict between the distribution of goods and services in a society and individual freedom as both cannot exist at the same time 5arrow later published a book on the same subject 6 arrow is also known as one of the first economists to recognize the so called learning curve 7legacy of kenneth arrowarrow s theoretical insight has proven its importance over the decades but he contended that his conclusions about the workings of competitive markets held true only under ideal that is to say unrealistic assumptions these assumptions ruled out the existence of third party effects an example of such an effect would be the idea that the sale of a product by harry to joe would not affect the well being of sally however this idea is routinely violated in the real world by the sale of products that harm the environment among other effects 8arrow s later research translated simple ideas into elegant mathematics which other economists extended into unanticipated directions one of those notions was learning by doing an idea that arrow examined in the early 1960s the basic idea was that the more a company produced the smarter it got 9 decades later economists incorporated this idea into sophisticated theories of endogenous growth which state that economic growth depends on internal company policies that promote innovation and education 10kenneth arrow died on feb 21 2017 11