Kenneth Arrow (born
1921) is an
American economist. He won
The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in
1972, which he shared with
John Hicks.
His most significant works are his contributions to social choice theory[?], notably "Arrow's impossibility theorem", and his work on general equilibrium analysis.
Arrow's impossibility theorem was set out in his
PhD thesis,
Social choice and individual values. It shows the impossibility of designing rules for social decision making that obey all of a number of 'reasonable' criteria. It is often known as
Arrow's paradox.
Working with
Gerard Debreu[?] (who won the Nobel prize for this work in
1983), Arrow produced the first rigorous proof of the existence of a market clearing equilibrium, given certain restrictive assumptions. See
general equilibrium.