MORGENSTERN, OSKAR

MORGENSTERN, OSKAR (1902–1977), U.S. economist. Born in Goerlitz, Germany, Morgenstern taught at the University of Vienna (1928–38) and served as a director of the Austrian Institute of Business Cycle Research (1931–38). From 1936 to 1938 he served concomitantly as an adviser to the Austrian Ministry of Commerce and from 1936 to 1946 as a member of the committee of statistical experts of the League of Nations. In 1938 he settled in the United States and taught at Princeton University, where he became a full professor in 1944, and in 1948 director of its econometric research program. From 1955 to 1957 he was a consultant to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and from 1959 to 1960 the White House consultant on atomic energy matters. In addition to general economic theory, his principal interests were econometrics and business cycles. One of Morgenstern's major contributions to the field was the formal conception of "game theory" as part of economic theory, which he and John von Neumann first organized in the classic book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944). Game theory was later expanded upon and refined by John Nash and others. Morgenstern retired from Princeton in 1970. Morgenstern's other publications include The Limits of Economics (1937), Economic Activity Analysis (1954), The Question of National Defense (1959), International Financial Transactions and Business Cycles (1959), On the Accuracy of Economic Observations (1950, 19632), Predictability of Stock Market Prices (with C.W.J. Granger, 1970), Long-Term Projections of Power (1973), and Mathematical Theory of Expanding and Contracting Economies (with G.L. Thompson, 1976). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Shubik (ed.), Essays in Mathematical Economics (1967), incl. bibl. (Joachim O. Ronall / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)