Debreu, Gerard

Debreu, Gerard (dəbr`), 1921–2005, French-American economist, b. Calais, France. He studied mathematics in France before coming to the United States in 1950, where he worked with the Chicago-based Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. With such books as Theory of Value (1959), Debreu made mathematical advances in the theory of economic equilibrium, examining how supply and demand are balanced through prices. He taught economics and mathematics at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, from 1962 to 1991, and became an American citizen in 1975. Debreu was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1983.

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Debreu, Gerard (1921–  ) economist; born in Calais, France. Educated in France, he immigrated to the U.S.A. in 1950. He moved with the Cowles Commission from the University of Chicago to Yale in 1955 but left to take a professorship at the University of California: Berkeley (1960). He collaborated with Kenneth Arrow to produce a definitive mathematical method to prove the existence of equilibrium among prices, production, and consumer demand. In 1959, he published Theory of Value, restating traditional economic price theory using set theory and topology. He received the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor (1976) and the Nobel Prize in economics (1983).