Arnold Harberger

Some years later, Harberger extended his analysis to the case of an economy that buys and sells goods, and imports or exports capital, in worldwide markets. The results from this specification differ markedly from those of the closed-economy version. In particular, if externally provided capital is in perfectly elastic supply to a country, then capital cannot bear any part of the tax burden in the long run, and it is quite possible for labor to bear more than 100 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax. He views the open-economy case as relevant for the analysis of a single country's choice of tax rate, with the closed-economy model as applying to the effects of a general movement of worldwide corporate tax rates in the same direction, such as the decline that has been observed over the past several decades. A summary of his views on the practical policy considerations regarding the corporate income tax in particular countries can be found in his 2008 paper.

Harberger speaks fluent Spanish. He is known for maintaining close ties with his former students, many of whom have held influential government posts throughout Latin America, especially in Chile. Among his former students are 15 central-bank presidents and about 50 government ministers. He takes pride in the work they have done to advance sound economic policy in many countries over many decades. He has been criticized for giving economic advice to some authoritarian governments in Latin America. In the case of Chile, Harberger's influence on the "free-market" reforms undertaken by the Pinochet regime (after the failure of its initial policies of direct economic control) was solely through former students of his, dubbed the Chicago Boys by commentators, who had agreed to work in that government to address the ongoing economic crisis. The core of those reforms has been continued by a succession of democratically elected governments in Chile since the end of the Pinochet government in 1990.

He married Chilean Anita Valjalo in 1958. The two remained together until her death in 2011.

Harberger completed his B.A. in economics at Johns Hopkins University, and his M.A. in international relations in 1947 and his Ph.D. in economics in 1950 at the University of Chicago. After teaching at Johns Hopkins, Harberger returned to the University of Chicago to teach full-time from 1953 to 1982, and part-time from 1984 to 1991. Since 1984, he has been a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, serving as professor emeritus since 2014.

Arnold Carl Harberger (born July 27, 1924) is an American economist. His approach to the teaching and practice of economics is to emphasize the use of analytical tools that are directly applicable to real-world issues. His influence on academic economics is reflected in part by the widespread use of the term "Harberger triangle" to refer to the standard graphical depiction of the efficiency cost of distortions of competitive equilibrium. His influence on the practice of economic policy is manifested by the high positions attained by his followers in national agencies such as central banks and ministries of finance, and in international agencies such as the World Bank.