Remembering Anita Arrow Summers🍋
Data-driven, policy-minded economist Anita Arrow Summers has died, aged 98
The daughter of Romanian immigrants to the United States, Anita Arrow graduated from Hunter College in New York City in 1945 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. She originally considered studying law but was told “you’ll get into a good law school and from there you’ll be in the back room of a law firm, never see a court room, never see a client”. Instead, she studied economics and statistics.
In 1946 she worked as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research, during the tenure of Arthur Burns and Wesley Clair Mitchell. It was there she developed an interest in business cycles.
In 1947, Anita completed a master’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago. Her thesis on business cycles contrasted the work of the neoclassicists and the institutionalists, arguing that both are needed, that is, a compromise between simplicity and accuracy. In an interview with Claudia Goldin and James Poterba, Anita recalled that at that time, neoclassicists had models based on the theory of business cycles but were distanced from what was actually happening, while institutionalists rejected theory and focused on accurate descriptions of what was happening but had no models from which to make predictions.
Her first job on graduation was with the Standard Oil Company. Anita told Claudia Goldin that when the hiring manager told her she had the job, he’d added that since she was a woman “I am getting the same brains for less money”.
Anita introduced the use of data to Standard Oil, measuring economic conditions in countries where Standard Oil operated. She was given important projects but wasn’t allowed in the executive suite where women were barred. Instead, Anita had to sit by the phone, waiting for her boss to call with questions about her analysis. “You can decide to fire me, but I will never do this again”, she told her boss. He took her to see the executive and that was the end of the matter.
While working, she pursued doctoral studies at Columbia University but discontinued after marriage to fellow economist Robert Summers, their move to Pennsylvania, and the birth of three children.
After their sons reached school age, Anita began teaching economics at Swarthmore College and in 1971 joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, heading its urban economics unit. In 1979 she became the founding chairwoman of Wharton’s public policy and management department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Anita insisted that public policymaking could be strengthened with economic analysis and that government leaders should use data and other evidence to develop policies to help people. She did early work on land zoning restrictions, which she considered “pernicious” because they “made the price of housing high by restricting development” said her son, Lawrence Summers.
Economics ran in Anita's family. Her brother Kenneth Arrow, brother-in-law Paul Samuelson, husband, and son are all noted economists. As her son Lawrence once said, "we were more likely to discuss inflation at the dinner table than other families”.
Anita Arrow Summers died on October 22, 2023, aged 98.
Based on an interview with Claudia Goldin and James Poterba, along with material from The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Photo credit: Hunter CUNY
