Miguel Sidrauski (October 12, 1939 – September 1, 1968) was an

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

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 ...

who made important contributions to the theory of

economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...

by developing a modified version of the

Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans model The Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans model, or Ramsey growth model, is a neoclassical model of economic growth based primarily on the work of Frank P. Ramsey, with significant extensions by David Cass and Tjalling Koopmans. The Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans mo ...

to describe the effects of

money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...

on long-run growth. He also published an article on

exchange rate In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of ...

determination. Sidrauski taught

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Sidrauski was born and educated in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

. He entered graduate studies at 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 1963 and completed his PhD in 1966 under the supervision of

Hirofumi Uzawa was a Japanese economist. Biography Uzawa was born on July 21, 1928 in Yonago, Tottori to a farming family. He attended the Tokyo First Middle School (currently the Hibiya High School ) and the First Higher School, Japan (now the University ...

and

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...

. After completing his PhD, he was appointed as an assistant professor at MIT. Sidrauski, who was

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, was described by his colleague

Duncan K. Foley Duncan K. Foley (born June 15, 1942) is an American economist. He is the Leo Model Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Econo ...

as “a committed

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

.” He died of cancer at the age of 28, and was surrounded by his wife and two-month-old daughter. Sidrauski is best known for his 1967 article, "Rational Choice and Patterns of Growth in a Monetary Economy," which was based on his PhD dissertation. The article analyses a model of a representative household that intertemporally maximises

utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...

, which in turn depends on both the

consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...

of goods and the holding of real balances of money. The model implies that in steady state,

capital intensity Capital intensity is the amount of fixed or real capital present in relation to other factors of production, especially labor. At the level of either a production process or the aggregate economy, it may be estimated by the capital to labor ratio, ...

is invariant to the rate of monetary expansion or contraction, a result that is described as superneutrality of money.

Selected publications

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Selected publications

References

Further reading