Reaganomics Foe Wins Nobel for Economics

American Robert M. Solow, a Keynesian economist sharply at odds with President Reagan’s free-market policies, today won the Nobel Prize in economics.

Solow, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was cited for publishing a mathematical formula in 1956 “describing how increased capital stock generates greater per capita production.”

The 63-year-old Solow, who was an adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, was the 15th American to win the $340,000 prize since it was created in 1968.

At a press conference at MIT, Solow said he believes tax increases and “tighter fiscal policies” are needed to reverse the record budget deficit hampering U.S. economic growth.

“Those are painful things in the U.S., where everything is built on success and more success,” Solow said.

“The best thing you can say about Reaganomics is that it probably happened in a fit of inattention,” he said. “I would like to see the President stop this nonsense about how ‘I will never raise taxes over my dead body.’

“We’re going to be a number of years digging ourselves out of a hole that we dug for ourselves over the past six or seven years.”

According to the formula Solow devised, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said, national economies eventually reach a stage of development after which growth “will be exclusively determined by technological progress.”

Nobel Committee President Assar Lindbeck told reporters Solow’s work convinced industrialized countries to devote more resources to universities and to scientific research, which spearhead such progress.

Solow has long been a research partner and friend of Nobel laureate Paul A. Samuelson, also of MIT, who won his economics prize in 1970.

MIT said the genial Solow was especially valuable to the school because he had continued to provide equal time to undergraduates, graduate students and his own research.