Kenneth Arrow, an American economist, is known for his contributions to mathematical economics. Educated at City College of New York and Columbia University, he has taught at Stanford and Harvard universities. He was awarded the Nobel Prize (jointly with Sir John Richard Hicks) for his work in welfare economics and the theory of social choice. The possibility of a theory of social choice, or collective choice based on the preferences of individuals has intrigued economists for some time. Arrow's Ph.D. thesis, published as Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), was the seminal work in the field of social choice theory and showed the impossibility of deriving efficient group outcomes based on the aggregate of rational individual preferences. In a later book, Social Choice and Multicriterion Decision-Making (1986), which was coauthored with Herve Raynaud, Arrow dealt with additional decision criteria and alternatives in a search for efficient group outcomes. Despite the importance of these two works, the general reader may find them somewhat difficult and abstruse. The work of most general equilibrium economists like Arrow is seldom well known outside the economics profession. Even so, Arrow's range of interests extends far beyond the straightforward mathematical treatment of economics. For example, he is an outspoken advocate of the decontrol of oil prices.
