Karl Shell (born May 10, 1938) is an American theoretical

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the 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 field there are ...

, specializing in macroeconomics and monetary economics. Shell received an A.B. in mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

in 1960. He earned his Ph.D. in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

in 1965 at Stanford University, where he studied under Nobel Prize in Economics winner

Kenneth Arrow Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972. In economi ...

and

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 o ...

. Shell is currently

Robert Julius Thorne Robert Julius Thorne (February 23, 1875 – March 20, 1955) was an American businessman who was president of Montgomery Ward from 1917 to 1920. Life Robert Thorne was born in February 1875 in Chicago, Illinois, to George R. Thorne. The senior Tho ...

Professor of

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

(succeeding notable economist and airline deregulator

Alfred E. Kahn Alfred Edward Kahn (October 17, 1917 – December 27, 2010) was an American economist and political advisor who specialized in regulation and deregulation. He was an important influence in the deregulation of the airline and energy industries ...

in the Thorne chair). He previously served on the economics faculty at MIT and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...

. Shell has been editor of the '' Journal of Economic Theory'', generally regarded as the leading journal in theoretical economics, since its inception in 1968.

Contributions to economics

While Shell has published academic articles on numerous topics in economics, he is primarily known for his contributions in three areas. Between 1966 and 1973, Shell published three papers on inventive activity,

increasing returns to scale In economics, returns to scale describe what happens to long-run returns as the scale of production increases, when all input levels including physical capital usage are variable (able to be set by the firm). The concept of returns to scale arises ...

, industrial organization, and economic growth. This contribution was important in its day, and later influenced the development of "new growth theory." Among others, Paul Romer cited and heavily built upon Shell's work in his seminal papers on endogenous growth theory. Shell also made important contributions to the overlapping generations literature (and was perhaps the first to refer to the overlapping generations model by its modern name). The overlapping generations model is now a workhorse in modern macroeconomics and monetary economics. Karl Shell is also co-inventor (with David Cass) of the concept of sunspot equilibrium (and sunspots). Sunspot equilibrium provides a model for excess market volatility, including bank runs.

References

Publications

*Karl Shell, "Toward a Theory of Inventive Activity and Capital Accumulation", ''American Economic Review'', Vol. 56(2), May 1966, 62–68. *Karl Shell, "A Model of Inventive Activity and Capital Accumulation" in ''Essays on the Theory of Optimal Economic Growth'' (K. Shell, ed.), Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1967, Chapter IV, 67–85. *Karl Shell (Editor), ''Essays on the Theory of Optimal Economic Growth'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1967, (hardcover), 9780262690133(paperback). *Karl Shell, "Notes on the Economics of Infinity", ''Journal of Political Economy'', Vol. 79(5), September/October 1971, 1002–1011. *Karl Shell and Giorgio P. Szegö (Editor), ''Mathematical Methods in Investment and Finance'', Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1972. (North- Holland), 044410395 (American Elsevier). *Karl Shell and Franklin M. Fisher, ''The Economic Theory of Price Indices: Two Essays on the Effect of Taste, Quality, and Technological Change'' , New York: Academic Press, 1972. . *Karl Shell, "Inventive Activity, Industrial Organization and Economic Growth" in ''Models of Economic Growth'' (J.A. Mirrlees and N. Stern, eds.), London: Macmillan, and New York: Halsted (John Wiley & Sons), 1973, 77–100. *Karl Shell and David Cass (Editor), ''The Hamiltonian Approach to Dynamic Economics'', New York: Academic Press, 1976. . *David Cass and Karl Shell, "Do Sunspots Matter?", ''Journal of Political Economy'', Vol. 91(2), April 1983, 193–227. *Karl Shell, William A. Barnett and John Geweke (Editor), ''Economic Complexity: Chaos, Sunspots, Bubbles, and Nonlinearity'', New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. . *Karl Shell and Franklin M. Fisher, ''Economic Analysis of Production Price Index'', New York: Cambridge University Press (Hardcover, , and soft cover, ), 1998. *Karl Shell, "Sunspot Equilibrium", ''The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition'' (L. Blume and S. Durlauf, eds.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

External links

*Karl Shell Web Page: http://www.karlshell.com. * *''Journal of Economic Theory'' Web Page: http://jet.arts.cornell.edu/Main.html. * * *Karl Shell CV: http://karlshell.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CV-June-25-2021-4.pdf American economists 1938 births Living people Fellows of the Econometric Society {{US-economist-stub