Jack Hirshleifer, 1925-
UCLA economist, Jack Hirshleifer is one of the pioneeers of the application of theories
of uncertainty and information in economics.
His earliest work was on investment theory,
notably his "resurrection" of the Fisherian real theory of investment and interest (1958,
1970). He extended his analysis to include one of the earliest attempts to formalize a
theory of investment under uncertainty in one of the earliest applications of Kenneth Arrow's state-preference
approach (1965, 1966). He is also a pioneer of information theory, providing in
his infamous 1971 piece the paradoxical result that too much information can actually
reduce welfare. He has continued to work on problems in uncertainty and information
- particularly in explaining the term structure of interest rates and the role of
liquidity and speculation. He has also worked on grafting the notion of "evolution" into Neoclassical economics.
Major works of Jack Hirshleifer
- "On the Theory of Optimal Investment Decision", 1958, JPE.
- "The Bayesian Approach to Statistical Decision: An exposition", 1961, Journal
of Business.
- "Investment Decision Under Uncertainty: Choice-theoretic approaches", 1965, QJE.
- "Investment Decision Under Uncertainty: Applications of the state-preference
approach", 1966, QJE.
- "A Note on Böhm-Bawerk/Wicksell
Theory of Interest", 1967, RES.
- Investment, Interest and Capital, 1970.
- "The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive
Activity", 1971, AER.
- "Liquidity, Uncertainty and the Accumulation of Information", 1972, in Carter
and Ford, eds, Uncertainty and Expectation in Economics.
- "Where Are We in the Theory of Information?", 1973, AER.
- "Speculation and Equilibrium: Information, risk and markets", 1975, QJE.
- "The Theory of Speculation Under Alternative Regimes of Markets", 1977, JFinance
- "Economics from a Biological Standpoint", 1977, JLawE.
- "The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information: An expository survey", with
J.G. Riley, 1979, JEL.
- Price Theory and Applications, 1980.
- The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information, with J.G.Riley, 1992.
- "The Legal Battle: Application of Warfare Models to Litigation", 1998
Resources on Jack Hirshleifer