Angus Stewart Deaton is a leading microeconomist. He was educated at
Fettes CollegeFettes College is an independent school for boarding and day pupils in Edinburgh, Scotland with over two thirds of its pupils in residence on campus...
in Edinburgh, where he was a Foundation Scholar, and earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at Cambridge University, where he was a Fellow at Fitzwilliam College and a Research Officer working with
Professor Sir Richard Stone Sir John Richard Nicholas Stone was an eminent British economist who in 1984 received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for developing an accounting model that could be used to track economic activities on a national and, later, an international scale...
and
Terry BarkerTerry Barker is a British economist and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research part of the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge...
in the Department of Applied Economics. Deaton was a Professor of Econometrics at the
University of BristolThe University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
before moving to
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1983. He is currently the
Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School and the Economics Department at Princeton.
Scholarship
Deaton's first work to become widely known was the Almost Ideal Demand System, which he developed with John Muellbauer. The Almost Ideal Demand System represents an elegant treatment of consumer demand. It provides an arbitrary first order approximation to any demand system, one which satisfies the axioms of choice while avoiding unattractive features of other models. In 1978, Deaton became the first recipient of the
Frisch MedalThe Frisch Medal is an award in econometrics given by the Econometric Society. It is awarded every two years for empirical or theoretical applied research published in Econometrica during the previous five years...
, an award given by the
Econometric SocietyThe Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation with statistics and mathematics. It was founded on December 29, 1930 at the Stalton Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio....
every two years to an applied paper published within the past 5 years in
EconometricaEconometrica is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles not only in econometrics but in many areas of economics. It is published by the Econometric Society and distributed by Wiley-Blackwell. Econometrica is one of the most highly ranked economics journals in the world...
. Deaton is a Fellow of the
Econometric SocietyThe Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation with statistics and mathematics. It was founded on December 29, 1930 at the Stalton Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio....
, a Corresponding Fellow of the
British AcademyThe British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
, and a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Rome,Tor Vergata, University College London, and the University of St. Andrews. In 2007, he was elected President of the
American Economic AssociationThe American Economic Association, or AEA, is a learned society in the field of economics, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It publishes one of the most prestigious academic journals in economics: the American Economic Review...
.
He formulated what is known as the "Deaton Paradox" based on the observation of excess smoothness of consumption in the face of unanticipated permanent income shocks. In addition to analysis of household behavior at the microeconomic level, Deaton's research areas include the measurement of global poverty,
health economicsHealth economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to efficiency, effectiveness, value and behavior in the production and consumption of health and health care...
and
economic developmentEconomic development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policymakers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area...
.
Deaton is also the author of a popular feature in the
Royal Economic SocietyThe Royal Economic Society is incorporated by a Royal Charter dated 2 December 1902. It is one of the oldest economic associations in the world. Currently it has over 3,300 individual members, of whom 60% live outside the United Kingdom...
Newsletter—a bi-annual
Letters from America.
Books
Economics and Consumer Behavior, New York: Cambridge University Press. (450 pp.) (with J.Muellbauer).
Understanding Consumption, Oxford. Clarendon Press, 242 pp. (The 1991 Clarendon Lectures in Economics.) Spanish translation, El Consumo, Madrid, 1995. Chinese Translation, 2003.
The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank, 1997. (479 pp.)
"The Great Indian Poverty Debate" edited by Angus Deaton and Valerie Kozel, New Delhi : Macmillian India Ltd., 2005.
External links