Herbert A. Simon

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001), the winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics earned international fame and recognition mainly for his theory of organizational decision making. The American-born economist Herbert A. Simon is also well-known for his diverse researches in areas like computer science, cognitive psychology, management, philosophy of science, sociology and public administration. [br]

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001), the winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics earned international fame and recognition mainly for his theory of organizational decision making. The American-born economist Herbert A. Simon is also well-known for his diverse researches in areas like computer science, cognitive psychology, management, philosophy of science, sociology and public administration. [br]

Life and career profiles:

Born to Jewish parents at Milwaukee in Wisconsin on 15th July 1916, Herbert Alexander Simon received his B.A. and doctorate (Ph.D.) degree in political science in 1936 and 1943 respectively, from the University of Chicago. During the years 1939 to 1942, he was appointed as the Director of a research group at the University of California in Berkeley.

Major theories advocated: [br]

• In course of his study of Mathematical economics between 1950 and 1955, Simon discovered and proved the Hawkins-Simon theorem, on the “conditions for the existence of positive solution vectors for input-output matrices”.
• Simon also developed theorems on near-decomposability and aggregation, and tried to apply them on organizational levels.
• Simon is known to have innovated the concept of artificial intelligence.
• Together with Allen Newell, Simon was the exponent of the programs and theories related to the Logic Theory Machine in 1956 and the General Problem Solver (GPS) in 1957.
• Simon was perhaps the first economist to describe decision-making in organizations in terms of uncertainty, which means that it is not possible to avail full or perfect information at any given point of time, in order to take decisions. In fact, it is this research area which brought Nobel Prize to this famous economist.
• Simon tried to apply statistics and mathematics to economic theories. To this effect, he propounded the theories of econometrics and general equilibrium. It stated that it is not hypothetically correct on the part of the entrepreneurs to abide by the marginalist principles of profit-maximization or cost-minimization in course of running organizations.

Books by Herbert A. Simon

• Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution
• An Empirically-Based Microeconomics (Raffaele Mattioli Lectures)
• Models of Bounded Rationality, Volume 2: Behavioral Economics and Business Organization (v. 2)
• Protocol Analysis – Rev’d Edition: Verbal Reports as Data

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