Arthur Melvin Okun

Art Okun
7th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office February 15, 1968 – January 20, 1969
President	Lyndon Johnson
Preceded by	Gardner Ackley
Succeeded by	Paul McCracken
Personal details
Born	(1928-11-28)November 28, 1928 Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	March 23, 1980(1980-03-23) (aged 51) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	Columbia University (BA, MA, PhD)
Academic career
Institution	Yale University
Field	Macroeconomics
School or tradition	Neo-Keynesian economics
Doctoral advisor	Arthur F. Burns
Influences	John Maynard Keynes
Contributions	Okun's law Misery index

Arthur Melvin "Art" Okun (November 28, 1928 – March 23, 1980) was an American economist. He served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers between 1968 and 1969. Before serving on the C.E.A., he was a professor at Yale University and, afterwards, was a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.^[1]

Okun is known in particular for promulgating 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 and the analogy of the deadweight loss of taxation with a leaky bucket.^[2] He died on March 23, 1980, of a heart attack.^[3]

Okun graduated from Columbia College in 1949 with the Albert Asher Green Memorial Prize for the highest GPA.^[4] He went on to obtain a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia in 1956 before teaching at Yale University.^[5]

Works

• Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1975)
• Prices and Quantities: A Macroeconomic Analysis, see here (1981) ISBN 0-8157-6480-4

See also

• Okun's law

References

External links

• Brookings Inst Bio and Obit
• Arthur M. Okun (1928–1980). Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.). Liberty Fund. 2008. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• "Arthur Okun Publication List" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-09-18.