Armen Alchian

Armen Alchian was born on April 12, 1914 in Fresno, California. In 1932 he attended Fresno State College, and transferred to Stanford in 1934. He obtained his B.A. from Stanford in 1936. He continued at Stanford as a graduate student, finishing his Ph.D. dissertation on "The Effects of Changes in the General Wage Structure" in 1943. In 1940-41 he was at the NBER and Harvard, and in 1942 he was an instructor at the University of Oregon. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942-46 doing statistical work. He arrived at UCLA in 1946, becoming associated with RAND at the same time. He became a full professor at UCLA in 1958. He as received numerous awards and honors over the years, and became a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 1996.

The late Emeritus Professor in Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles. Known for the so called Alchian-Allen theorem in economics of demand that states that better quality goods travel longer distances.