IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05717465.html

The Virtues of Clarity: Robert Dorfman, from Mathematical Programming to Environmental Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Julien Gradoz

    (CLHDPP - Centre lyonnais d'Histoire du droit et de la pensée politique - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon)

Abstract

This article explores the career of American economist Robert Dorfman (1916-2002), that can be divided into three distinct phases. During the first phase (1938-1958), he made contributions to mathematical programming and statistics. The clarity of his work was particularly emphasized by his colleagues, who believed it greatly helped disseminate mathematical programming among economists in the 1950s. In the second phase (1959-1972), he contributed to water management. His work during this phase was more applied and characterized by its interdisciplinary nature. Notably, he collaborated with oceanographers, political scientists, and sanitation engineers. Again, his explanations of the economic approach to water management and the relevance of mathematical programming in this context were praised for their clarity. During the third phase (1972-1997), he moved away from the specific case of water to focus more broadly on environmental economics, especially on critiques of cost-benefit analysis. By retracing his career, this article sheds light on the links among his various contributions and the role that clarity plays in how an economist's work is received.

Suggested Citation

  • Julien Gradoz, 2025. "The Virtues of Clarity: Robert Dorfman, from Mathematical Programming to Environmental Economics," Post-Print hal-05717465, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05717465
    DOI: 10.3917/redp.355.0809
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05717465v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05717465. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.