Vernon L. Smith

Vernon Lomax Smith ( born January 1, 1927 in Wichita, Kansas, United States) is an American economist. He is considered one of the most important representatives of the experimental capital market research, a research branch of experimental economics. In 2002 he received the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Life

Smith earned his doctorate at Harvard University, where at this time Gottfried Haberler, a representative of the Austrian School taught. In the sixties he started his work on economic laboratory experiments at Purdue University. From 1976 to 2002 research and taught at Smith Eller College of Management, the Faculty of Economics of the University of Arizona. Smith is Professor of Economics and Law at the George Mason University.

1986-1987 Smith was founding president of the Economic Science Association.

In 2002, Smith was awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences the Bank of Sweden in memory of Alfred Nobel with Daniel Kahneman.

Teaching

Smith calls for the greatest possible freedom for the economy. This should - in his view - also to be reflected to impose any tax on corporate profits still savings.

Smith explained this in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard on September 26, 2005: " The money that saves a person, the economy will remain, invests and produces tomorrow's growth. Only what he consumes, he takes away the society, because that can then consume no other. A person who is rich, but not spend much of it, leaving the rest for you and me to work. It thereby helps to reduce poverty. That may not be his intention, but he does it anyway. We should applaud him and not punish him. [ ... ] Everything that flows into the company goes out again - to other companies, employees, creditors or shareholders. Everything goes to individuals. Therefore one should only tax individuals - and only the consumption. "