"But the old dilemma between efficiency and fairness was about to be shattered by a young New Yorker called Kenneth Arrow, who knew all about unfairness after watching helplessly as a teenager while his father lost his successful business and all his savings in the Great Depression. The desire for social justice stayed with Arrow, but intellectually he couldnāt just ignore the question of efficiency. The young economist set his logical mind to wrestling with the tension between the unerring efficiency of the free market and the imperative that some kind of fairness should prevail. His solution was brilliant, twisting the traditional thinking about competitive markets and efficiency on its head. He proved that not only are all perfect markets efficient, all efficient outcomes can be achieved using a competitive market, by adjusting the starting position."
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Academics from the United StatesPeople from New York CityMathematicians from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesNobel laureates in Economics
Original Language: English
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Sources
Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist (2006), ch. 3. Perfect Markets and the āWorld of Truthā
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arrow
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Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Joseph Arrow (August 23, 1921 ā February 21, 2017) was an American economist, who was Professor Emeritus of Economics in Stanford, and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972.
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