Herschel Ivan Grossman (6 March 1939 – 9 October 2004) was an American economist best known for his work on

general disequilibrium In macroeconomic theory, general disequilibrium is a situation in which some or all of the aggregated markets, such as the money market, the goods market, and the labor market, fail to clear because of price rigidities.Mankiw (1990), 1655. In th ...

with

Robert Barro Robert Joseph Barro (born September 28, 1944) is an American macroeconomist and the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Barro is considered one of the founders of new classical macroeconomics, along with Robert Lucas, J ...

in the 1970s and later work on property rights and the emergence of the state.

Life and career

Grossman grew up in Philadelphia, where he attended Central High School. He received a bachelor of arts from the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

(1960), a B.Phil. from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

(1962), where he was a student at Merton College, and his Ph.D. from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

(1965). Grossman collaborated with Barro to produce the influential article "A General Disequilibrium Model of Income," which, for many years, held the distinction of being the most cited article ever published in the ''American Economic Review''. The article explored the idea that disequilibrium in one market can have spillover effects to another market, creating a distinction between notional demand and

effective demand In economics, effective demand (ED) in a market is the demand for a product or service which occurs when purchasers are constrained in a different market. It contrasts with notional demand, which is the demand that occurs when purchasers are not ...

. Grossman and Barro expanded on their work and produced the classic textbook ''Money, Employment, and Inflation'' in 1976. Following his work on disequilibrium, Grossman made several contributions to the study of economic policy and political economy. His work transitioned as he investigated the institutional frictions behind Keynesian macroeconomic models. Grossman's work in political economy included the study of conflict. In a 2003 paper he explored the use of expected future scarcity as an explanatory variable in current conflicts. Grossman also investigated

property rights The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership) is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely and is typically h ...

. He analyzed property rights formation under "common pool" situations, where all resources are initially held in common, and "initial claims" cases, where individuals have an initial claim to resources before rights are established. Grossman's work showed how property rights could emerge in a decentralized manner. Grossman also studied the trade-offs between a decentralized property rights and a centralized authority. He found a centralized authority would emerge when creating defensive work were relatively expensive and appropriations (taxation) were relatively easy. Otherwise, a decentralized system would emerge. Grossman died suddenly in 2004 while attending a conference in Marseilles, France.Spolaore (2008).

Notes

References

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Pdf.
* :*Available online at
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online.
Palgrave Macmillan. 5 November 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Grossman, Herschel 20th-century American economists University of Virginia alumni Brown University faculty Macroeconomists 1939 births 2004 deaths Alumni of Merton College, Oxford