William Alonso

William Alonso (born in 1933, deceased on February 11, 1999) was an American economist.

William Alonso was born in 1933 in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. He began his career with a bachelor's degree in architectural science from Harvard University in 1954. He also received a master's degree in city planning from Harvard University in 1956. In 1960 he received a doctorate in regional science from the University of Pennsylvania.

From 1960 to 1961 Alonso worked as director and professor in the Department of Regional and Urban Planning at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia. He then served as a visiting professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1962 before coming to Harvard as the acting director of the Center of Urban Studies from 1963 to 1965. Alonso also worked at Yale University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford University.

Since 1976 Alonso was Director of the Center for Population Studies of Harvard University. Two years later he became the Richard Saltonstall professor of population policy in the Faculty of Public Health and a member of the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

His research was focused on demographic changes, in particular in very strongly urbanized areas. He thus developed a mathematical model, connecting migration and the evolution of the distribution of the population.

In 1964, he published "Location and land use", in which he defined a modelled approach on the formation of land rent in urban environments. His model would become one of the pillars of urban economics as from the seventies.

Persondata
NAME = Alonso, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = American economist
DATE OF BIRTH = 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH = Buenos Aires
DATE OF DEATH = February 11, 1999
PLACE OF DEATH =