Arthur Melvin Okun

Arthur Melvin "Art" Okun (November 28, 1928 – March 23, 1980) was an American economist. Okun is known in particular for Okun's law, an observed relationship that states that for every 1% increase in the unemployment rate, a country's GDP will be roughly an additional 2.5% lower than its potential GDP. He is also known as the creator of the misery index, the analogy of the deadweight loss of taxation with a leaky bucket, and for the conception of "the invisible handshake".

Biography Okun graduated from Columbia College in 1949 with the Albert Asher Green Memorial Prize for the highest GPA. He went on to obtain a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia in 1956 before teaching at Yale University.

He served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers between 1968 and 1969. Afterwards, he became a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

He died on March 23, 1980, of a heart attack.

Works Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1975) Prices and Quantities: A Macroeconomic Analysis, see here (1981)