#robertayres — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #robertayres, aggregated by home.social.
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I've just learned that Robert Ayres died this past October
Robert Ayres, known as "Bob” to his friends and colleagues, was a distinguished physicist and economist, whose pioneering research, unconventional thinking and passion for his work transformed our understanding of sustainability. Colleagues at IIASA remember him as the true innovator and scientist at heart. One of his most groundbreaking works was his research of industrial ecology or industrial metabolism — a concept he originated and pioneered within the scientific community, with his first publications on this subject dating back to the 1960s.
https://connect.iiasa.ac.at/news/1740123
The work I most associate with Ayres is of the role of energy in economics. Ayres strongly influenced and worked with Steve Keen, who subsequently developed a revised model of the Cobb-Douglas production function incorporating energy as well as the traditional capital and labour, which accounts for virtually all of the so-called "Solow residual". I'd learnt of Ayres death through an interview with Keen with #NateHagens on the latter's #TheGreatSimplification podcast.
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@WillFischer Yes, R.U. (Robert Underwood) Ayres is an excellent source.
I'm aware of him, and list a selection of his papers here:
I'd mentioned him as well in a recent HN comment suggesting works on the Industrial Revolution, though omitted any specific papers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33982015
Steve Keen has been working with Ayres in recent years, including from Ayres's own home. Keen's come up with a new production function based on capital, labour, and energy, which reduces Solow's Residual to effectively nil.
(Why economists are so peevishly resistant to including energy in production functions ... escapes me.)