Arthur Melvin Okun

Template:Short description Template:Infobox officeholder Arthur Melvin "Art" Okun (November 28, 1928 – March 23, 1980) was an American economist.

Okun is known in particular for Okun's law, an observed relationship that states that for every 1% increase in the unemployment rate, a country's GDP will be roughly an additional 2.5% lower than its potential GDP. He is also known as the creator of the misery index, the analogy of the deadweight loss of taxation with a leaky bucket,<ref>Okun, Arthur M. (1975), Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1975, pp. 91–92.</ref> and for the conception of "the invisible handshake".<ref name=Challenge1980>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=Brookings1981>Template:Cite book</ref>

Biography

Okun graduated from Columbia College in 1949 with the Albert Asher Green Memorial Prize for the highest GPA.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He went on to obtain a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia in 1956 before teaching at Yale University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers between 1968 and 1969. Afterwards, he became a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.<ref>View/Search Fellows of the ASA Template:Webarchive, accessed 2016-08-20.</ref>

He died on March 23, 1980, of a heart attack.<ref>Arthur Okun Dies, Economic Adviser to Johnson, accessed 2020-08-14.</ref>

Works

• Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1975)
• Prices and Quantities: A Macroeconomic Analysis, see here (1981) Template:ISBN

External links

• Brookings Inst Bio and Obit
• Template:Cite encyclopedia
• Template:Cite web