Lester G. Telser

Lester G. Telser
Born	January 3, 1931 Chicago, Illinois, US
Died	September 3, 2022 Chicago, Illinois, US
Academic career
Institution	University of Chicago Iowa State College
Alma mater	University of Chicago Roosevelt University
Doctoral advisor	Milton Friedman

Lester Greenspan Telser (January 3, 1931 - September 3, 2022) was an American economist and Professor Emeritus in Economics at the University of Chicago.[1]

Education and career

He was a native of the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago and a graduate of the Chicago Public Schools (Charles Kozminski elementary school and Hyde Park High School (now Hyde Park Academy High School)) and Roosevelt University, where he studied under Abba Lerner. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1956, with Milton Friedman as his principal thesis supervisor.[2] He taught briefly at Iowa State University and was conscripted into the United States Army in which he served from 1956 to 1958. He was a member of the University of Chicago faculty from 1958 (emeritus at the time of death).[1] He was a visitor at the Cowles Foundation (which had formerly been at the University of Chicago) at Yale University in 1964–1965 and at the Center for Operations Research in Econometrics (CORE) at the Catholic University of Louvain (Université catholique de Louvain) in Louvain (Leuven, Belgium) in 1969–1970.

Contributions

His works include research on the theory of the core, Federal Reserve policy, and integer programming.[1][3] Unusually for the Chicago school of economics, he also wrote about game theory as early as 1972.[4]

A brief, personal history by Telser of the University of Chicago Economics Department including the importance of the Cowles Foundation is available as part of a symposium on "Living the Legacy: Chicago Economics through the Years."[5] The University of California-Berkeley also created an oral history of modern economics and included an interview with Lester Telser.[6]

Awards and honors

In 1968 he became a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Statistical Association.[7][8]

Books

• Functional Analysis in Mathematical Economics: Optimization Over Infinite Horizons (with Robert L. Graves, 1972).[9]
• Competition, Collusion, and Game Theory (1972).[10]
• Economic Theory and the Core (1978).[11]
• A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition (1987).[12]
• Theories of Competition (1988).[13]
• Joint Ventures of Labor and Capital (1997).[14]
• Classic Futures: Lessons from the Past for the Electronic Age.[15]
• The Core Theory in Economics: Problems and Solutions (2007).[16]

References

1. Faculty listing Archived 2006-08-11 at the Wayback Machine, University of Chicago Economics Department, retrieved 2010-01-07.
2. Ebenstein, Lanny (2007). Milton Friedman: A Biography. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 89. ISBN 9780230603455.
3. "Lester G. Telser". JSTOR.
4. The Chicago School Archived 2010-02-04 at the Wayback Machine, History of Economic Thought web site, The New School, retrieved 2010-01-07.
5. "Living the Legacy: Chicago Economics through the Years". YouTube. 14 October 2015. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2015-10-28.
6. Lester Telser: Beyond conventions in economics. Oral History Center. 2018.
7. Fellows of the Econometric Society as of July 2009 Archived December 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 2010-01-07.
8. ASA Fellows Archived 2020-04-09 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 2010-01-07.
9. University of Chicago Press, 1972, ISBN 978-0-226-79190-6.
10. Macmillan, 1972, ISBN 978-0-333-13644-7; Aldine treatises in modern economics, 1972, ISBN 978-0-202-06043-9; Transaction, 2007, ISBN 978-0-202-30925-5.
11. University of Chicago Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-226-79191-3. University of Chicago Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0-226-79193-7.
12. Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-521-30619-5. Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-521-02220-0.
13. North-Holland, 1988, ISBN 978-0-444-01248-7.
14. University of Michigan Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-472-10866-4.
15. Risk, 2000, ISBN 978-1-899332-92-2.
16. Routledge, 2007, ISBN 978-0-415-70144-0; Taylor and Francis, 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-49365-9.