James Tobin
1918-2002
Photo: Michael Masland, Office of Public Affairs, Yale University
“I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging… At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind.”
– Professor James Tobin, in “Nobel Lectures,” upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1981
James Tobin spent most of his academic career as a professor at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1981 for his theory “of financial markets and their relation to consumption and investment decisions, production, employment and prices.”
Professor Tobin regularly reminded his graduate students that it was the responsibility of academics not only to produce outstanding research and to teach their students to the best of their ability, but also to look for ways to serve the public, which (he noted) generously supported their academic research and their academic freedom. He himself published in popular as well as academic venues, advised policymakers, and served on President Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers in the early 1960s.
The Council’s 1962 Economic Report was, as Professor Tobin recalled, “a full statement of the theory and practice of the policies for stabilization and growth associated with what the press then called the ‘new economics’. Work at the Council was demanding, exciting, and sometimes frustrating. But our advice gradually gained a large measure of acceptance, and by the end of 1965, our basic macroeconomic goals were achieved.”
Soon after Professor Tobin’s death in 2002, one of his closest colleagues at Yale, Professor William Brainard, commented on his friend’s “faith in the power of ideas.” It is precisely that faith that animates the work of the project. The founders of the Tobin Project approached Professor Tobin’s children in the spring of 2005, seeking permission to name the venture after their late father. With their approval, the Tobin Project was born.
“Knowledge advances when striking real-world events
and
issues pose puzzles we have to try to understand and resolve.
The most
important decisions a scholar makes are what
problems to work on.”
Professor James Tobin in Lives of the Laureates, 1986
© 2008 Tobin Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
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