James Tobin
The true worth of a person's life can’t be measured by academic credentials, bank accounts, or honor earned. The true measure of life is how it has impacted others, and what kind of legacy it has left behind. James Tobin is one of a kind. He is a man who devoted his life working in economics and he has left a lasting influence on how we understand the behavior of financial markets. He was born into a middle-class, educated and liberal family. Tobin, from his childhood, was very much interested in economics as he thought that it offered hope to better mankind. In the 1930s, Tobin was only a teenager and that was the time of the Great Depression, a time of social and political crisis, which had a great influence on his thought. He reasoned, correctly, that the failure of capitalist economics was the main reason for much of the economic disasters…show more content… He decided to take a year or two off after his Harvard baccalaureate for which he was granted a traveling fellowship. Unfortunately, his plan was ruined by the outbreak of the World War in 1939. Instead of doing what he initially wanted, he spent the next two years at Harvard University as a graduate student. During the six year he spent studying at Harvard, not only he cultivated lifelong friends from many different backgrounds, but also had the opportunity to study with the great instructions of some of the most talented professors of Harvard. For example, Joseph Schumpeter, Alvin Hansen, Seymour Harris, Edward Chamberlin, Edward Mason, Gottfried Haberler, Sumner Slichter, and Wassily Leontief. In those days before the war, Harvard was like the center of intellectual activities and Tobin was part of that. He was absorbed into the intense political debate on the campus. He worked and became friends with people who were a fan of John Kenneth Galbraith, Lloyd Metzler, Abram Bergson and Paul Samuelson who went on to become famous economists like him later