Andreu Mas-Colell (; born 29 June 1944) is an

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

, an expert in

microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics fo ...

and a prominent mathematical economist. He is the founder of the

Barcelona Graduate School of Economics The Barcelona School of Economics (BSE) is an institution for research and graduate education in economics, finance, data science, and the social sciences located in Barcelona, Spain. The school's academic offer includes Master's degrees as well ...

and a professor in the department of economics at

Pompeu Fabra University Pompeu Fabra University ( ca, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, UPF, ; es, link=no, Universidad Pompeu Fabra) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. The university was created by the Autonomous Government of Ca ...

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

. He has also served several times in the

cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filin ...

of the Catalan government.Curriculum vitae
from Mas-Colell's web site at Pompeu Fabra, retrieved 2011-01-17.Faculty profile
Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, retrieved 2011-01-17..
Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, retrieved 2011-01-17. Summarizing his and others' research in

general equilibrium theory In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an ov ...

, his monograph gave a thorough exposition of research using

differential topology In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with the topological properties and smooth properties of smooth manifolds. In this sense differential topology is distinct from the closely related field of differential geometry, which ...

.Page vii:

Yves Balasko Yves Balasko is a French economist working in England. He was born in Paris on 9 August 1945 to a Hungarian father and a French mother. After studying mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris he became interested in economics. He ...

. ''Foundations of the Theory of General Equilibrium'', 1988, . His textbook on microeconomics, co-authored with Michael Whinston and Jerry Green, is the most used graduate microeconomics textbook in the world.. The same result was also obtained in a survey of economics instructors by . In June 2021, Spain’s

Court of Auditors The European Court of Auditors (ECA; French: ''Cour des comptes européenne'') is one of the seven institutions of the European Union (EU). It was established in 1975 in Luxembourg in order to improve EU financial management. It has 27 members ( ...

announced its intention to levy a multimillion Euro fine against him after placing his name on a list of those responsible for pre-2015 expenditures on Catalan independence, leading to an outcry by economists and a dissent by one of the tribunal’s members.

Biography

A native of Barcelona,Page 559: Mas-Colell completed his undergraduate studies at the

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...

, earning a degree in economics in 1966. He moved to the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

for his graduate studies, and completed his Ph.D. in 1972 under the supervision of Marcel Richter. He took a faculty position in mathematics and economics at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, becoming a full professor in 1979. In 1981, he moved to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

, and in 1988 he became the Louis Berkman Professor of Economics at Harvard. In 1995 he moved to Pompeu Fabra to lead the Department of Economics and Business. He was editor-in-chief of the '' Journal of Mathematical Economics'' from 1985 to 1989, and of ''

Econometrica ''Econometrica'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles in many areas of economics, especially econometrics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Econometric Society. The current editor-in-chief is ...

'' from 1988 to 1998. He was president of the

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

in 1993 and of the

European Economic Association The European Economic Association (EEA) is a professional academic body which links European economists. It was founded in the mid-1980s. Its first annual congress was in 1986 in Vienna and its first president was Jacques Drèze. The current pres ...

in 2006. In public service, Mas-Colell was the Commissioner for Universities and Research of the

Generalitat of Catalonia The Generalitat de Catalunya (; oc, label= Aranese, Generalitat de Catalonha; es, Generalidad de Cataluña), or the Government of Catalonia, is the institutional system by which Catalonia politically organizes its self-government. It is formed ...

in 1999–2000. While Minister of Universities, Research and the Information Society for the Generalitat from 2000 to 2003, Mas-Colell implemented a research institution called

Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, is a foundation jointly promoted by the Catalan Government through its Department of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise, and the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI) ...

(ICREA) Page 1431: to attract top-notch scientists in all fields of knowledge, from philosophers to astrophysicists, to perform their research in 50 different host institutions in Catalonia. Mas-Colell served the Secretary General of the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

from 2009 to 2010. In the Catalonia Government from 2010-2016, presided by

Artur Mas Artur Mas i Gavarró (; born 31 January 1956) is a Spanish politician from Catalonia. He was president of the Government of Catalonia from 2010 to 2015 and acting president from September 2015 to 12 January 2016. Mas is a long time member of ...

, he was appointed as the Minister for Economy and Knowledge, being responsible for the government's budget, economic policy, and research policy. Spain’s

in June 2021 held Mas-Colell and several former colleagues in the Catalan government responsible for the mismanagement of €4.8m in support of Catalan independence.

Paul Romer Paul Michael Romer (born November 6, 1955) is an American economist and policy entrepreneur who is a University Professor in Economics at New York University. Romer is best known as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and for co-recei ...

, a Nobel prizewinner in economics, said that the procedure appeared to be ‘not justice but politics by other means.’ One member of the tribunal voted against the decision.

Research

Mas-Colell's research has ranged broadly over mathematical economics. In particular, he has been associated with a revival of the use of

differential calculus In mathematics, differential calculus is a subfield of calculus that studies the rates at which quantities change. It is one of the two traditional divisions of calculus, the other being integral calculus—the study of the area beneath a curve ...

(in the form of "

global analysis In mathematics, global analysis, also called analysis on manifolds, is the study of the global and topological properties of differential equations on manifolds and vector bundles. Global analysis uses techniques in infinite-dimensional manifold t ...

") at the highest levels of mathematical economics. Following

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest c ...

's break-throughs in economics, and particularly after his introduction of

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defi ...

and

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

into economic theory, advanced mathematical economics reduced its emphasis on differential calculus. In general equilibrium theory, mathematical economists used

general topology In mathematics, general topology is the branch of topology that deals with the basic set-theoretic definitions and constructions used in topology. It is the foundation of most other branches of topology, including differential topology, geometri ...

convex geometry In mathematics, convex geometry is the branch of geometry studying convex sets, mainly in Euclidean space. Convex sets occur naturally in many areas: computational geometry, convex analysis, discrete geometry, functional analysis, geometry of ...

, and

optimization theory Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

more than differential calculus. In the 1960s and 1970s, however,

Gérard Debreu Gérard Debreu (; 4 July 1921 – 31 December 2004) was a French-born economist and mathematician. Best known as a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began work in 1962, he won the 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize ...

and

Stephen Smale Stephen Smale (born July 15, 1930) is an American mathematician, known for his research in topology, dynamical systems and mathematical economics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and spent more than three decades on the mathematics faculty ...

led a revival of the use of differential calculus in mathematical economics. In particular, they were able to prove the existence of a general equilibrium, where earlier writers had failed, through the use of their novel mathematics: Baire category from general topology and

Sard's lemma In mathematics, Sard's theorem, also known as Sard's lemma or the Morse–Sard theorem, is a result in mathematical analysis that asserts that the set of critical values (that is, the image of the set of critical points) of a smooth function ...

from

and

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and mult ...

. Their publications initiated a period of research "characterized by the use of elementary differential topology": "almost every area in economic theory where the differential approach has been pursued, including general equilibrium" was covered by Mas-Colell's monograph on differentiable analysis and economics. Mas-Colell's book "offers a synthetic and thorough account of a major recent development in general equilibrium analysis, namely, the largely successful reconstruction of the theory using modern ideas of differential topology", according to its back cover. Mas-Colell has also contributed to the theory of general equilibrium in topological vector lattices. The sets of prices and quantities can be described as partially ordered vector spaces, often as vector lattices. Economies with uncertain or dynamic decisions typically require that the vector spaces be infinite-dimensional, in which case the order properties of vector lattices allow stronger conclusions to be made. Recently researchers have studied

nonlinear pricing Nonlinear pricing is a broad term that covers any kind of price structure in which there is a nonlinear relationship between price and the quantity of goods. An example is affine pricing. A nonlinear price schedule is a menu of different-sized bu ...

: A "main motivation came from the fact that Mas-Colell's fundamental theory of welfare economics with no interiority assumptions crucially requires lattice properties of commodity spaces, ''even'' in finite-dimensional settings."Page 503 (Chapter 8 "Applications to economics", especially Section 8.5. "Pareto optimality in ordered commodity spaces", and the remainder of the chapter, particularly Section 8.5.11 "Nonlinear pricing")

Books

Mas-Colell is the author or co-author of: *''The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium: a Differentiable Approach'' (Econometric Society Monographs in Pure Theory 9, Cambridge University Press, 1990, ). This book was evaluated for ''

Mathematical Reviews ''Mathematical Reviews'' is a journal published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) that contains brief synopses, and in some cases evaluations, of many articles in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science. The AMS also pu ...

'' by Dave Furth, who wrote that ::Mas-Colell's book is one of the first and still one of the most complete and most rigorous of the few textbooks on the applications of differential topology and global analysis to the theory of general economic equilibrium. .... People working in the field ought to own and to have used it already for some time. So those still wanting to consult for the first time and perhaps wanting to buy the book must be mathematicians interested in economic applications of the above-mentioned mathematical subjects. They will not regret consulting and/or buying it; the book is excellent. *''Microeconomic Theory'' (with Michael Dennis Whinston, Jerry R. Green, Oxford University Press, 1995, ). writes that this "is the most commonly used textbook in microeconomics". *

Awards and honors

Mas-Colell is a foreign associate of the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...

, a foreign honorary member of the

American Economic Association The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members. History and Constitution The AEA was esta ...

, a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

, a member of the Institute of Catalan Studies, a fellow of the Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, and a fellow of the

. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Alicante in Spain, the

University of Toulouse The University of Toulouse (french: Université de Toulouse) was a university in the French city of Toulouse that was established by papal bull in 1229, making it one of the earliest universities to emerge in Europe. Suppressed during the Frenc ...

and

HEC Paris HEC Paris (french: École des hautes études commerciales de Paris) is a business school, and one of the most prestigious and selective grandes écoles, located in Jouy-en-Josas, France. HEC offers Master in Management, MSc International Fin ...

in France, the National University of the South in Argentina, and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in the United States.
in the United States He is a recipient of the

Creu de Sant Jordi The Creu de Sant Jordi (, in English ' St George's Cross') is one of the highest civil distinctions awarded in Catalonia (Spain), surpassed only in protocol by the Gold Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya. It was established by the Generalit ...

, the highest civil honor of Catalonia, and of the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics. Also he has received the 2009

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in Economy, Finance and Management (co-winner with

Hugo F. Sonnenschein Hugo Freund Sonnenschein (November 14, 1940 – July 15, 2021) was an American economist and educational administrator. He served as president of the University of Chicago from 1993 to 2000. Early life Sonnenschein was born in New York City on ...

). In honor of his 65th birthday and his service on the European Research Council, two conferences were held in his honor at Pompeu Fabra in 2009, the ''Journal of Mathematical Economics'' published a special issue in his honor, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor of the university.

References

External links