Scientific Papers of Tjalling C. Koopmans
Tjalling C. Koopmans
The MIT Press, 1985
Foreward
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During the last half-century, economic theory and econometrics have undergone a vital transformation. Forma1 mathematical models have become the major vehicle for the presentation of economic ideas-ideas which can then be examined with the logical precision and special methods of argument made available by the language of mathematics. Tjalling C. Koopmans was, and is, one of the leaders of this intellectual revolution.
I have been privileged to know Tjalling Koopmans as a close personal friend and professional colleague since 1957. Despite my great familiarity with his work, a rereading of these articles is still capable of eliciting feelings of awe, admiration, and aesthetic delight. Few economists of his stature have consistently displayed such intellectual freshness, conceptual originality, and stylistic clarity over such an extended period of time. Koopmans has had many laurels be- stowed on him and has frequently beckoned the profession of economics into new and fruitful areas of inquiry; nevertheless, his work continues to have the directness and simplicity customarily associated with a young researcher in the early stages of his professional journey.
Although his work so frequently displays powerful and sophisticated mathematical arguments, Koopmans is not a detached and abstract mathematical economist. Throughout his career he has continued to insist that a line of inquiry in economics, if it is to be valuable, must ultimately be useful. His early work on linear programming and on the role of prices in the optimal allocation of resources was stimulated by the transportation problem, a specific practical problem that arose at the Combined Shipping Adjustment Boards in 1942. His work on econometric methodology in the late 1940s established the framework-and provided the primary theoretical stimulus-for the development of large macroeconomic models of the economy. Koopmans's first papers on economic growth theory do present theorems and mathematical models, but his preoccupation with the usefulness of formal arguments resulted in the articles in this volume on energy scarcity and on the more general problem of exhaustible resources. This same motivation prompted him, in 1975, to accept the chairmanship of the Modeling Resources Group of the Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Systems (CONEAS) of the National Academy of Sciences. Under Koopmans's guidance, that group compared the results of a number of long-range energy models of the economy. His 1978 presidential address to the American Economic Association will give the reader a clear indication of the importance with which Koopmans views the study of specific policy choices based on detailed economic and engineering data. The topics cited in the references to this address are illuminating: underground power transmission, alternative energy growth patterns, helium conservation, energy modeling for an uncertain future, and the costs and benefits of automobile emission controls.
As many of the articles in this volume indicate, Tjalling Koopmans has a remarkable ability to attract a variety of collaborators to his professional ventures. He is gregarious, bold, inquisitive, and capable of initiating and maintaining fruitful relationships with economists, mathematicians, engineers, and scientists from all parts of the world. His qualities of leadership and intellectual involvement have been displayed during his long association with the Cowles Commission and the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. For many years, younger scholars have been guided by him in the choice of research topics and the methods of written and spoken ex- position, and visitors have been reminded that the requirements of clarity and logical coherence were never to be discarded when entering the seminar room.
Leaders of a scientific revolution combine judgment, intellectual penetration, and personal force. The articles in this volume testify to the presence of these qualities in one of the most distinguished economists of our time.
Herbert
E. Scarf
January 1985
Contents
Chapter 1. Note on a Social System Composed of Hierarchies with Overlapping Personnel, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 2. Maximizing Stationary Utility in a Constant-Technology, R. Beals and T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 3. On the Description and Comparisons of Economic Systems, T.C. Koopmans and J.M. Montias
Chapter 4. Representation of Preference Orderings with Independent Components of Consumption, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 5. Representations of Preference Orderings over Time, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 6. On the Definitions and Computation of Capital Stock, T. Hansen and T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 7. Some Observations on ‘Optimal’ Economic Growth and Exhaustible Resources, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 8. Is the Theory of Competitive Equilibrium With It?, T.C Koopmans
Chapter 9. Proof for a Case where Discounting Advances the Doomsday, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 10. Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 11. Examples of Production Relations Based on Microdata, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 12. Economics Among the Sciences, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 13. Alternative Futures With or Without Constraints on the Energy Technology Mix, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 14. The Transition from Exhaustible to Renewable or Inexhaustible Resources, T.C. Koopmans
Chapter 15. Additively Decomposed Quasiconvex Functions, G. Debreu and T.C. Koopmans