Edward C. Prescott: Biography

Edward C. Prescott: Biography Edward C. Prescott is an American economist who has been one of the most influential economists in the world. He has been recognized for contributing to advancements in the economy by receiving numerous awards such as a Noble Prize for economics, and for writing a set of papers called Economic Theory with another famous economist Finn E. Kydland. Edward was one of the founding members of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, and its first President. Prescott has also recently been involved in politics. In January 2009 Prescott, and 250 other economists and professors, signed an open letter to Barack Obama opposing the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He has also taught economic classes at a couple of universities. The famous economist Edward Christian Prescott was born on December 26, 1940 in Glens Falls, New York. It was not hard for him to get into the most prestigious schools in nation. But he decided to go to Swarthmore College because he didn’t care about social status, and Swarthmore was less intimidating then the Ivy League schools. He began studying physics in college, but after three years he decided to dropout of the physics honors program and enroll in graduate school in operations research at Cast Tech, which became Case Western. After fifteen months, Prescott earned his master’s degree. Once Edward got his master’s degree he didn’t stop there. He decided to go to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was there where he met his wife Janet Dale Simpson. They got married June 5, 1965. After marrying his wife, Prescott left Carnegie Mellon and joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty, but he never became a professor. It was at Penn where Edward wrote the paper “Investment under Uncertainty”. This paper is what transformed him into an economist instead of a statistics guru. In 1974, Prescott and his wife moved to Norway for a year. The trip was both personally