A. G. PAPANDREOU’S ACADEMIC ECONOMIC THOUGHT 1943–1963

Abstract

The aim of this article is to make an overall assessment of Andreas George Papandreou’s theoretical contributions during his American academic career, from the perspective of the history of economic thought. Papandreou contributed to the postwar development of economic thought in competition theory and experimental testing of consumer theory. In developing competition theory, he introduced a new method of evaluating the monopolistic power of a firm through a coefficient measuring the firm’s penetration in the market. Furthermore, he suggested a way of experimentally testing whether individual preferences satisfy the axiom of transitivity. He actively participated in the methodological controversies on the realisticness of economic assumptions that took place between 1946 and 1953, and on the empirical meaning of economics in 1963, between Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Fritz Machlup, Herbert Simon, and others.