Armen Alchian Biography

Armen Alchian was born on April 12, 1914 in Fresno, California. In 1932 he attended Fresno State College, and transferred to Stanford in 1934. He obtained his B.A. from Stanford in 1936. He continued at Stanford as a graduate student, finishing his Ph.D. dissertation on "The Effects of Changes in the General Wage Structure" in 1943. In 1940-41 he was at Harvard, and in 1942 he was an instructor at the University of Oregon. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942-46 doing statistical work. He arrived at UCLA in 1946, becoming associated with RAND at the same time. He became a full professor at UCLA in 1958. He as received numerous awards and honors over the years, and became a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 1996.

Alchian is the founder of the "UCLA tradition" in economics, a member of the Chicago school of economics, and one of the more prominent price theorists of the second half of the 20th century. He is the author of pathbreaking articles on information and uncertainty, and the theory of the firm. Through his writings on property rights and transaction costs, he is a founder of the new institutional economics. Alchian's writings have touched on topics conventionally viewed as macroeconomic: money, inflation, unemployment, and the theory of business investment. His writings are characterized by lucid witty exposition and a minimum of mathematical formalism.

Alchian is known for the impact he has had on generations of UCLA graduate students, largely through his first year course in microeconomics. His best known student is William F. Sharpe, who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1990 for his work on finance.

I did not know about Armen Alchian or his work in the field of economics prior to being given his alias. His work has been especially important for the progression of Economics as a subject. Being the founder of the UCLA tradition in Economics his work is extremely relevant for us to study. The UCLA tradition emphasizes that individual behavior is self-seeking and "rational" and that this has many unanticipated consequences. It recognizes that "rationality" is the outcome of evolution and learning, and emphasizes the frictions such as uncertainty that act as brakes on individual's ability to make decisions and coordinate with one another. This is an essential topic for us to learn from as well as Econ 490, the Economics of Organization with recognizing rationality.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armen_Alchian
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/faculty-bulletin-board/in-memoriam--armen-alchian--founder-of-the--ucla-tradition--in-economics
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Alchian.html
http://www.dklevine.com/general/alchian.htm