Background
Moses, Leon Nathan was born on October 27, 1924 in New York City. Son of Charles and Jean (Gibbell) Moses.
Moses, Leon Nathan was born on October 27, 1924 in New York City. Son of Charles and Jean (Gibbell) Moses.
Bachelor with highest distinction, Ohio State University, 1945. Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1951. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1955.
Teaching Fellow, University Buffalo, New York, 1945-1946. Instructor, University Miami, Florida, 1946-1947. Instructor, Northwestern University, 1950-1951.
Industrial
Economics, TVA, 1951-1952. Research Association, Assistant Professor, Harvard University, 1952-1959. Association Professor Economics Director Research, Director, Transportation Center, Northwestern University, 1959-1962.
1974-1979; Lector, American Studies Program, Kyoto University Japan 1973. Professor of Economics, Association Transporation Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, since 1963, since 1979. Book Review Editor, JRS, 1978-1980.
Author, editor: Safety in an Era of Economic Deregulation, 1990, The Transportation of Hazardous Materials, 1993.
Nowadays, economists generally agree on the need to incorporate spatial considerations into economic reasoning: the influence of transportation and communication costs on the performance and organisation of economic activity are now broadly recognised as involving challenging theoretical and important public policy issues. This was not true thirty years ago. My papers my have contributed to the change, because in them I tried to show that economic theory could be adapted and extended in ways providing significant insight into spatial aspects of economic behaviour.
Thus No. 2 above extended the traditional theory of the firm in ways that permitted the relationship between transportation costs and production decisions to be understood. No. 3 demonstrated how the introduction of transportation costs changes the basic conception of comparative advantage, adding an access cost dimension to it. It presented an approach in which the optimal patterns of production and interregional trade of industries are determined simultaneously.
The approach also provided insight into the locational question of which industries are candidates for expansion in which regions. The two papers on urban economics (Nos. 6 and 7) contained an approach in which transportation costs influence the structure of factor prices in an urban area and thereby determine patterns of location and land use.
The papers’ logic also offered insights into the rise of the great mononucleated cities in the 19th century and their decline in the 20th.
An inportant need today is the development of models in which spatial
and temporal reasoning are joined. Such models offer promise of providing deeper understanding of the behaviour of firms and households. The development and testing of models in which firms make decisions over both space and time is one of the areas in which I am currently working.
With United States Army, 1942-1943. Member American Economic Association.
Hiking, gardening, sailing.
Married Clare Baum, December 25, 1949 (divorced 1972). Children: Jonathan David, Richard Allen, Jared Daniel. Married Rae Arlene Stallcupp, May 30, 1936.
1 child, Megan.