Prof. Stephen Wright

Stephen H. Wright teaches in the Department of Economics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Previously he has taught at Cambridge and has served as staff economist for the Bank of England. He is the author, with Andrew Smithers, of Valuing Wall Street (McGraw-Hill, 2000).



If you were king for a day and could require all students to read one book in the field of economics, what would it be and why?

If I were King? What a strange hypothetical, especially for a US citizen! I’ll interpret your question as being “If I were a benign dictator” (the correlation between Kingship and Benign Dictatorship is I think pretty close to zero empirically). But my answer is straightforward, if highly biased: obviously students should read The Economy, the e-book produced by, and available from, www.core-econ.org. It is brand new and takes a very different approach to introducing economics. This recommendation is highly biased because I was involved in producing it; but I still think it is about the best thing you can read these days to get you started in economics.

What textbook did you use when you first studied economics, and would you still use it today as a professor?
I think I started with Samuelson, supplemented by Lipsey. I’ve never looked at Samuelson since but I suspect it is still pretty good – he was one of the greatest minds ever in economics.

Arnold Kling

Arnold Kling (Ph.D., M.I.T.) blogs at askblog. He previously blogged at EconLog, worked as an economist for the Federal Reserve System, and was a senior economist for Freddie Mac. He is the author of many books, including Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care (Cato Institute, 2006)

What's the biggest or most interesting mistake you have ever made as an economist (that you'd care to share), and was there a way to fix it?

I have changed my mind on some important issues. Whether I was mistaken before or now, or both, is to be determined. In graduate school, I believed sticky-price Keynesian economics. Now, I do not believe that any aggregate view of the economy is right. Industries expand and contract all the time, and every once in a while not enough industries are expanding to make up for the contracting ones. The probability that instead I was right before to be a Keynesian is certainly greater than zero.
 
I also once doubted that real trade took place among ancient people. I speculated instead that goods changed location because of marauding. But most archaeologists believe that there really was trade, so I was probably wrong on that.
 
In your opinion, who is the most important economist that most people have never heard of?

My first thought is Fischer Black. You absolutely must read Perry Mehrling's biography of him. If nothing else, you get a sense of what the 1970s felt like, both in the culture at large and in the economics profession. I have learned a surprising amount from biographies of economists. Skidelsky's three-volume biography of Keynes (not the abridged version) helped me to see Keynes as rebelling against Victorianism. That explains why Keynes came to see saving as pathological. David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations (Norton, 2006) is insightful on Romer and Krugman.  

Most people have not heard of James Buchanan, even though he won a Nobel. And even most economists think of him as a one-trick pony, namely Public Choice theory. But his book Cost and Choice (University of Chicago Press, 1969) demonstrates that he thought very deeply about economics. That is a tough book, to put on your list to read someday, but probably not soon.

Charles Kindleberger is important, in my opinion. In Manias, Panics, and Crashes (Basic Books, 1978) he does two important things. One is he explains Minsky, who was too confused to explain himself. Second, he extends Minsky in an important way, by emphasizing "displacement" as a trigger for movements in the Minsky cycle.

Have enough people heard of Hal Varian? He explained more about the economics of the Internet, from its communications architecture (lots of switches, economizing on lines) to the nature of information goods, than anyone else.

Prof. Josh Angrist

Prof. Joshua Angrist (Ph.D., Princeton University) is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a director of MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He taught at Harvard and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to MIT in 1996. He is the author (with Steve Pischke) of Mostly Harmless Economics: An Empiricist's Companion (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect (Princeton University Press, 2015).

 

Your CV contains a number of publications on the role of data in policy debates. Do you tend to be hopeful or despairing when it comes to policy makers paying attention to empirical/statistical studies produced by economists?    

Hope springs eternal in my empirical breast.

Do your students have more trouble with the mathematical side of generating data or with the process of writing up their results and communicating them clearly and effectively? 

My graduate students know a lot of math, probably so much that it inhibits thought. But yes indeed they struggle to write a coherent paragraph. Too bad, since scholars like those they aspire to be write for a living.

Prof. David Cleeton

Prof. David Cleeton (Ph.D., Washington University at St. Louis) is Professor of Economics at Illinois State University. He is coauthor (with Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie) of the textbook Financial Economics. He previously taught at Oberlin College, Christopher Newport University, and Ohio State University.



Everything involves trade-offs. What are the trade-offs of letting older economics textbooks go out of print and publishing newer ones?

A textbook is to college academics as the catechism is to Christian religion. The analogy is that both are instructive methods to summarize and contextualize the principles of the discipline or religion in question. However, the world is dynamic and evolving so the relevancy for practice must be updated to incorporate contemporary concerns and issues. Obviously, the Catholic Church is ponderous in its response while academics are innovative and entrepreneurial. There may also be important differences related to where you would place academics and church authorities along the organizational spectrum from competition to monopoly.
 
What course that is not normally required for an undergraduate economics major do you think all students should take before they finish their degree?

That is a tough question because the answer might be more efficiently crafted to reflect the interests, abilities, and career plans of a given economics student. For those interested in pursuing graduate studies in economics or a related field they should familiarize themselves with the basic tools used in crafting formal economic models. That means taking a course in mathematical economics, which itself may have some important prerequisites. For the student interested in a more broadly based liberal education I would suggest an economic history or history of economic thought course. Personally, I hedged my bet and took both.

Prof. David Autor

Prof. David Autor (Ph.D., Harvard University) is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published widely on labor availability, and specializes in human capital research. From 2009-2014, he was editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

You were recently quoted in a Wall Street Journal article on the increasing length of economic papers. Were there any quotes that you wish had made it into the article that got cut?

Yes! I made the point that part of the reason that articles are so long is that their length necessitates even more length! It sounds paradoxical, but it’s true. If you’re going to write 50 pages of body text, you need a 10 page intro to summarize it all — since almost no one will read your 50 page paper. But then, if the body of the paper is so long, you’d better add in signposts, summaries, and previews along the way. The end result is that the extra length of your paper demands even more text.

By analogy: If you engineer an overweight automobile, you’ll need a bigger engine, and a heftier suspension, and larger brakes, and a larger fuel tank for that larger engine, etc. All of these additions compound the original error. If you’d simply start out with a lean vehicle design, you need to add fewer weighty components to compensate for its excess mass.  

Are there any resources you’d recommend for aspiring economists—particularly but not only undergraduates—who want to write well? Or are there any economists who you think are especially good writers?

Paul Krugman’s Development, Geography, and Economic Theory is one of my favorite parables. It illuminates the role that economic theory serves in our profession.

Joshua Angrist is a terrific expository writer, and an admire both of his econometrics textbooks and his other popular and technical writings.

Prof. Javier Silvestre

Prof. Javier Silvestre (Ph.D., University of Zaragoza) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Economics and Economic History at the University of Zaragoza. He has written extensively on the economics of workplace safety and migration and has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, University College Dublin, Princeton University, and the University of British Columbia.




What are the differences between how economics is taught in Spain or Europe more broadly and the United States? 

This is difficult to answer. In fact, there are many differences between European countries. Perhaps a difference between the US and, say, Spain is that the first academic years tend to have more theoretical content here. Students are already choosing economics as a unique field of study from the start. These courses might make the first years more difficult. But the situation reverses regarding the last academic years, by far. The last academic years are much harder in the US.

Is it customary in Spain for students to learn anything about economics before they enter university? If so, at what age?

Typically, one of the two economics courses included in "bachillerato" (upper secondary school, from 16 to 18 years) is compulsory, and the other one is voluntary.

Prof. Sarah Estelle

Sarah Estelle (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is Associate Professor of Economics and Ruch Faculty Fellow at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. She is interested in public policy, especially criminal justice reform, education choices, risky health behaviors and parents' investments in children. In her research she extends the theories and empirical techniques of microeconomics to questions located along what some might consider the "imperialist" frontier of economic research made famous by Gary Becker. She also serves on the Board of Scholars at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.



If you were queen for a day and could require all students to read one book in the field of economics, what would it be and why?

As queen for a day, I would rather give everyone some advice on how to locate one economics book they might enjoy. My goal for them would be to find an aspect of economics that really lights their fire or, as a mentor of mine, Dr. Ken Elzinga at UVa likes to say, “stirs their cocoa.”
One type of book I often recommend to young economists and other economic novices is those that nurture economic intuition. These include books for a general audience that use economics to understand otherwise strange or paradoxical realities including volumes by Steven Landsburg and Daniel Hamermesh, any of the four fictional works featuring an economist-sleuth who solves murders, written under the pseudonym Marshall Jevons, and other novels that, sometimes rather subtly, impart economic perspective like Russ Roberts’ The Invisible Heart.

These books teach basic economics in a fun way which is a great for finding some traction with the economic way of thinking. To others, perhaps those who are interested in political economy, philosophy, history, or policy--those students of the liberal arts, say--I would recommend some of the classics. Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson and Bastiat’s The Law make clear that unintended consequences are pervasive. Such a lesson is key to economic literacy. Adam Smith is still extremely relevant and insightful. Too few professonial economists, even, have read The Wealth of Nations and even fewer The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Authors like Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek are a good read for those who grapple with big ideas related to economic systems, the role of the state, the importance of institutions, the wonder of the price system, etc. In fact, for those who are broadly curious about these sorts of things, even classic works of fiction--I’m thinking of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or Orwell’s 1984--can spur some helpful economic thinking. 

Finally, if there is a particular human issue or policy that someone is interested in, I might recommend they locate an economics journal and peruse its offerings on the topic. If someone is interested in education, for example, just skimming the titles and abstracts of the last few volumes of the Economics of Education Review would be enlightening about the variety of things that economists do within that broad topic area. If someone is interested in law (and maybe especially if they don’t think they’re interested in economics), I’d love to see them read a few articles that pique their interest in the Journal of Law and Economics. If s/he is interested in marriage and fertility behaviors or concerned about criminal behavior, addiction, or discrimination, s/he should read some Gary Becker. You can skip all the mathematical theory and econometrics for now, if you’d like.

I know I’ve missed many similarly useful texts, including many by the other economists you’ve interviewed, so I encourage your readers to look at what each of them have written as well. Still, I hope this typology is helpful to any individual who wants to think carefully about where he might his initial enthusiasm for economics.
Was there a particular person—a professor or someone outside of academia—who played an important role in your decision to become an economist?

I went into college thinking I'd like to be a politician. I quickly realized that compromise and telling people what they want to hear, well, neither was my cup-of-tea, so holding elected office mightn't be my best plan. Better yet, I love exploring big ideas, and there is another discipline (something that didn't even resemble what it looked like in high school) that did suit me: economics. I would say now, in hindsight, that it helped me understand better how God made my particular mind to work. The first person who influenced my decision to become an economist was someone I never met, Ludwig von Mises. In reading his book Liberalism I felt I had found a kindred spirit, and I realized I was an economist. (Not that I wanted to be an economist, rather I was made to be an economist.) After that, my undergraduate economics professors, especially my advisor Dr. Lee Coppock (now at UVa), played important roles in my decision to become a professional economist by nurturing my passion for economics as well as my economic intuition.

Realizing a passion for the subject matter and methodology of economics is crucial, of course, but just having an awareness that becoming a professional economist is possible is important as well. The first time I recall thinking about graduate school, a necessary step for becoming a professional economist, was my sophomore year at Hillsdale College, when the lecturer of my business statistics course, Mrs. Jacquelyn Blackstock, suggested to my parents that I should consider it. It is kind of a funny story, because Hillsdale, at least at that time, had something like parent-teacher conferences during Parents Weekend and my parents, always supportive and ever dutiful, took the opportunity to meet my professors. It is interesting that they're part of the story, because it was they who asked Mrs. Blackstock thinking outloud,"But how will she pay for it?" No one in my family had ever pursued a Ph.D. before, and as with many families of undergraduate students, we were all still worrying about how to pay for college. Mrs. Blackstock replied kindly, "She won't have to pay for it. They'll pay her." What a fantastic realization that grad school could be affordable (in reality, for some it can be almost lucrative at points) and that I could continue to pursue my passion without that particular challenge! I often reflect on this story, frequently sharing it with my most-promising students. First, this story provides me an opportunity to help current undergraduates refocus their efforts and energies on what is really crucial for getting into grad school and persisting on to becoming a full-fledged economist. Lacking high-level mathematical reasoning and skills, solid economic intuition, or intellectual curiosity are deal breakers. It should be a relief that, for those who possess these skills, affordability is much less of a concern. And second, this story reminds me not to assume that a good student is going to understand what he or she is capable of or what opportunities could lie ahead of them. I shouldn’t be subtle in my encouragement.

Prof. Joyce Burnette

Prof. Joyce Burnette (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is Lawrence E. Devorre Professor of Economics at Wabash College. She is an economic historian who focuses on the role of women in the labor market.  Her 2008 book, Gender, Work, and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain (Cambridge University Press), argues that, since strength was important in many occupations, lower wages do not necessarily imply discrimination.

 


Which book that isn't typically on course syllabi should all economics students read?

The book I would suggest is Joel Mokyr's Lever of Riches.

Do you have any good economics jokes you can share?

A physicist, chemist, and economist are stranded on a desert island.  They have canned food but no can openner.  The physicist says: "If we climb up a tree and drop the can, the force of the fall will open it." The chemist says: "If we heat the can, the contents will expand and force open the can." The economist says: "Assume we have a can opener..."

Prof. Claudia Rei

Prof. Claudia Rei (Ph.D., Boston University) is Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick. She has published several reviews and articles on European economic history.

 













If you were queen for a day and could require all students to read one book in the field of economics, what would it be and why?

Power and Plenty by Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke
The book provides a concise economic history of the world since the year 1000 and shows how international trade, at various stages, allowed for economic prosperity. The authors focus on the technological and political developments that prompted the various waves of trade and at the crucial importance of war and peace in the process that shaped the world economy we see today. If I were queen for a day I would make it a required reading for all students, and also to politicians whom I would rightfully appoint into office!

If you were not an economist, what would you be?

I never wished to fill any particular occupation unlike many children that aspire to doctors, firemen, or astronauts. I'm very squeamish so I knew early on I could not be a doctor, but I liked math and computers which does not narrow choices much. I grew up in Portugal so there was a non-negligible chance that I wouldn't be accepted into college due to the complicated application system. My Plan B at 17, was to shave my head and join the army. Not sure it would have been a great alternative career, so I am glad I got into college.

Prof. Gavin Wright

Prof. Gavin Wright (Ph.D., Yale University) is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, Emeritus at Stanford University. He has taught at the University of Michigan, and at both Cambridge and Oxford. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an National Science Foundation Grant, among many others. He has authored or coauthored many books, including Reckoning With Slavery (Oxford University Press, 1976) and Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013).

 

Was there a particular person—a professor or someone outside of academia—who played an important role in your decision to become an economist?
 
The most influential economist for me was Joseph Conard, who taught the economic theory seminar at Swarthmore College.  From Joe Conard I learned that it is possible to maintain Quaker values while pursuing economics as rigorously and truthfully as possible.  Sad to say, Joe Conard died of leukemia during my senior year, so I did not have the chance to share thoughts with him as I pursued my own career.  In terms of economic history, the influential person was William N. Parker at Yale, who hired me to work on the Parker-Gallman sample from the 1860 census at the end of my first year of graduate school. It was all downhill after that.

If you were not an economist, what would you be?

The appeal of economics for me was that you could be an academic while also having expertise and engagement with real-world issues.  As it turned out, I became an economic historian, a relatively academic specialty.  My best guess is that if I were not an economist, I would still be in some type of intellectual career. 

Prof. Michael Haines

Prof. Michael Haines (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Banfi Vintners Distinguished Professor of Economics at Colgate and also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research with the Development of the American Economy Program. He is the author of three books and co-editor of A Population History of North America (Cambridge University Press, 2000). He has received several grants from the National Institutes of Health and subcontracts from the National Science Foundation, and served as a consultant to the World Bank.

Do you have any good economics jokes you can share?

An economist is a person who is good with number, but doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.

[Editor's Note: There aren't as many good economist jokes as there are lawyer jokes, but here is a sampling that I found:

Three econometricians went out hunting, and came across a large deer. The first econometrician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second econometrician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third econometrician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "We got it! We got it!"

What happens when you put two economists in a room together? You get three opinions.

Economists are people who are too smart for their own good and not smart enough for anyone else's.

Did you know economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions?]

Prof. Mary Hansen

Mary Eschelbach Hansen (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is an expert in U.S. social policy. She is widely published in the fields of child policy, bankruptcy, and economic history. Her work addresses key issues in race, gender, and economic inequality. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.



Was there a particular person—a professor or someone outside of academia—who played an important role in your decision to become an economist?
 
For me, undergraduate professors made all the difference. My interest in economics was kindled by my prof for intro micro at Saint Louis University (LeRoy Grossman). He was enthusiastic in class, but, more importantly, we talked a lot outside of class. My decision to pursue life as an academic economist was guided by Rick Cheney. Again, Rick and I talked a lot outside of class. He knew me well, so he guided me well. All of my career, I have worked to emulate my experience at SLU and to train new PhDs to do the same.

Prof. Robert Whaples

Prof. Robert Whaples (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University. He is the co-editor of Historical Perspectives on the American Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1995)  and The Routledge Hndbook of Major Events in Economic History (Routledge, 2012), and is the author of the widely-cited "Do Economists Agree on Anything?" He has taught a Great Courses course on Modern Economic Issues.




What’s the best or worst advice you ever received when you were thinking about becoming an economist?

The best advice to a budding economist (although I didn't read it until many years after I became an economist) comes from Friedrich Hayek: "nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist – and … the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger.”

The worst advice I heard may have been that economics is important to study because it's all about money and you can earn a lot if you study it. Economics is about a lot more than just money and you can earn a very good living doing it. Money is important, but if that's your only motivation, you won't be happy as an economist or as a human being. 

Who’s the most important economist most people—including economists—have never heard of?

Most people have not heard of one of the most important economists of the twentieth century, Simon Kuznets, who did more than anyone else to conceptualize our national income and product accounts and to push estimates of GDP well back into the 19th century.

Less well known are two other economic historians who deserve to be read: Robert Higgs, whose research on the expansion of the U.S. government, especially Crisis and Leviathan, is essential and Price Fishback, whose research has rewritten our understanding of the Great Depression era. 

Prof. Martin Saavedra

Prof. Martin Saavedra (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Oberlin College. He primarily works in the fields of economic history, health economics, and labor economics. Most of his research focuses on how early-life shocks affect adult labor market and health outcomes.

 










 







What’s the most underrated or overrated book or idea in the field of economics?

My favorite book in economics is Naked Economics, by Charles Wheelan. I decided I wanted to become an economist after reading it. Freakonomics is also a very fun book. In terms of ideas, I think that techniques from computer science such as machine learning will play a very important role in discoveries over the next few decades in economics.


Was there a particular person—a professor or someone outside of academia—who played an important role in your decision to become an economist?

As for who played an important an role in my life, this list is too long to count. I've been very fortunate to have a excellent set of mentors and professors since I took my first economics classes. Bloggers who I have learned a lot from, although never met, include Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, and Andrew Gelman (although he is more of a statistician than an economist).

Prof. Diane Coyle

Prof. Diane Coyle (Ph.D., Harvard University) is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on competition analysis and the economics of new technologies and globalization. She is the author of numerous books, most recently GDP: A Bried but Affectionate History (Princeton University Press). She blogs at The Enlightened Economist. 




Many people I have interviewed have said that economics is much more statistics-based than it used to be. Do you think that's true, and if so, what are the tradeoffs of this trend?

Yes, it is more data-based, compared with previous decades. There is more data available - and ever more coming along with 'big data' - and the computer power and techniques to handle it as well. Relatively little economics is now theory-only. There has been some research into what kind of articles get published in the academic journals, and these show a clear trend toward more applied work. Statistics are an economist's window on the world.

Apart from being good at math, what is the most important piece of advice you can offer to an aspiring economist?

Math is important, but I would recommend making sure you keep a breadth of vision because economics is a social science. So read in another area as well - history would be my top choice, but it could be politics, anthropology, one of the natural sciences...

Dr. Russ Roberts

Russ Roberts (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Roberts hosts the weekly podcast EconTalk–hour-long conversations with authors, economists, and business leaders. His two rap videos on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek, created with filmmaker John Papola, have had more than nine million views on YouTube. His latest book is How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness (Portfolio/Penguin 2014).

Are there any books that were important to your development as an economist or that you would recommend to aspiring economists?

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, Individualism and Economic Order by F.A. Hayek, anything by Ronald Coase.

What is the best (or worst) advice you ever got about becoming an economist?

Economics is very beautiful but if it is only beautiful, it's not worth doing because it isn't beautiful enough. It has to be useful for understanding the world. (That's a paraphrase from Milton Friedman...)

Prof. David Surdam

Prof. David Surdam (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor of Economics and David W. Wilson Business Ethics Fellow at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the author of several books, including The Rise of the National Basketball Association (University of Illinois Press, 2012), Century of the Leisured Masses: Entertainment and the Transformation of Twentieth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2015), Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War (University of South Carolina Press, 2001), Run to Glory and Profits: The Economic Rise of the National Football League During the 1950’s (University of Nebraska Press, 2013).




 You've written a lot on the economic history of professional sports. To me, this seems like a dream job. Am I wrong?

I tell my students that they should try to choose a topic they are keenly interested in. As a child, I was interested in the Civil War (a National Geographic article on the centennial of Gettysburg and Vicksburg sparked my interest), sports (my brother was a star on the high school state championship basketball team), and television (my sister and I watched for hours). To do history, you must be prepared to sit in front of microfilm machines; handle musty, deteriorating manuscripts; and spend time in the stacks of various libraries. On the other hand, you meet pretty cool people--the library archivists and reference people.

I rather doubt that most young economists enjoy their research as much as I do, since they are often working on topics chosen by their dissertation advisors, and they are too busy trying to demonstrate their mathematical abilities.

Economists, though, should view themselves as storytellers. There's a lot of stories in revolving around the Civil War, baseball, and television.

You studied under a Nobel Prize winner in graduate school, and since you were at the University of Chicago, I guess you may have occasionally run into other winners. Was there anything especially interesting or surprising you observed about such prominent figures in the field? Did they have anything in common, apart from being very smart?

Well, I was fortunate in that Robert W. Fogel won his Nobel Prize a year before I completed my dissertation. One of the first things he told me was that he would make sure to make time to work with on the final stages of my dissertation. Winning a Nobel Prize creates a lot of distractions, although most of the U-Chicago Nobel Prize winners went back to work after the interviews; some rushed off to teach after the initial hoopla. Fogel mentioned that what set the Nobel Prize winners apart wasn't their smarts; being smart was simply a pre-requisite, and there were plenty of smart people around. What set the Nobel Prize winners apart was their dedication and their passion for learning and thinking. The graduate students heard a possibly apocryphal story that one of the Nobel Prize winners once said he liked coming into his office on Christmas because, "It was the one day of the year that his phone didn't ring."

The funny thing about being in a department with multiple Nobel Prize winners is that it is no big deal among them. Unless they become polemicists for the New York Times, most Nobel Prize-winning economists are anonymous. I once walked past the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House in Hyde Park (U-Chicago campus) and saw Gary Becker, another Nobel Prize winner, walking up the street.  A tour bus had just deposited a crowd of gawkers. None of them paid Becker--arguably one of the most influential economists of the second half of the twentieth century--any mind. I felt tempted to yell, "Look, there goes a Nobel Prize winner." Of course, out of respect for Professor Becker, I did not.

What's the worst advice you ever got as you were thinking about becoming an economist?

People didn't advise me with regard to becoming an economist. My Dad, who had a college degree, used to make fun of PhDs, but he quit joking about them, when I went off to graduate school. My high school accounting teacher was always sorry that I didn't become a CPA. In retrospect, my comparative advantage probably was in accounting, but I enjoy being an economist. The joke, "An economist is someone lacking the personality to be an accountant," is pretty funny, as it takes a swipe at both professions. 

I suppose it would have been nice for a professor to give us some punchlines to the ubiquitous query, "What's the economy going to do?" Strangers often ask me that question, when they first meet me. I honestly have no idea what the economy is going to do; I don't study that. I have fancy theories and terminology to toss around, but I have little clue. I think people don't believe me, when I tell them I don't know. They seem to think I'm keeping potentially lucrative information secret. If you look at most economists' investment portfolios, I doubt you'd see a significant advantage over the general, college-educated crowd.

Prof. Peter Leeson

Prof. Peter Leeson (Ph.D., George Mason University) is  the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. Formerly, Professor Leeson was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, a Visiting Fellow in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University, and the F. A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics.



In the preface of your 2009 book on piracy (The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, Princeton University Press), you asked your girlfriend to marry you. That’s a risk that most people wouldn’t take. Were there any economic principles at work in taking such an unusual approach to that decision (consciously at the time or now looking back after a few years)?

There are economic principles at work in taking every decision! The one guiding that decision: Of the proposal alternatives then available to me, which one would Ania appreciate the most – maximize her “proposal profit”? I think I got pretty close, and we’ll have been enjoying the returns for nine years come this spring.

Your just-published book (WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird, Stanford University Press) highlights many superstitious practices and their rational economic effects. Many people would think of superstitions as inherently irrational. Should we re-define “superstition” in light of your findings?

How about we redefine “irrational” instead? Something like this, “The pervasive, false belief according to which people do not always pursue their goals as best they can given their limitations and the limitations of their environment. See also, superstition.”

If I’d like to become an economist, what’s the biggest mistake I should avoid?

Don’t confuse economics with the technical tools often used by economists – or with psychology. Also, don’t confuse a counterfeit Cohiba Behike with the real thing: the former tastes like crap and won’t do anything for you; the latter is sublime and will (in a few years, my young friend!) make you a better economist.

Prof. Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey (Ph.D., Harvard University) taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 2000 to 2015 in economics, history, English, and communication. She has written 17 books and around 400 scholarly pieces on topics ranging from technical economics and statistical theory to transgender advocacy and the ethics of the bourgeois virtues. She is known as a “conservative” economist, Chicago-School style (she taught at the University of Chicago from 1968 to 1980), but protests, “I’m a literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not ‘conservative’! I’m a Christian libertarian.” The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an N.E.H. Fellowship, and honorary degrees from universities in five different countries, Prof. McCloskey's latest book is Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

 


In your short article from 1992 titled “The Natural,” you wrote about the difficulty of teaching economics to undergraduates, due to the tendency to treat them as if they learned the subject easily, instead of making them push through all the difficulties of understanding the subject carefully. Has anything happened to change your views in the past 25 years?

​No, because it's not about how hard they work, but about certain personality types or family backgrounds grasp the subject easier, naturally. It's like having a good arm for pitching a baseball, the term "a natural" coming from baseball talk. Some people see arguments from self-interest easier because they run their own lives on self-interest. And others, whether or not they have that (rather common) personality, grow up in small business or farms in which they learn the importance of price incentives and the results of chores and so forth in a way that a student does not who grows up in a household detached from the market (Mom and Dad "go to the office" to make their income, which is mysterious in a way that helping your father plow the back 40 is not)​.

You have written seventeen books and hundreds of scholarly articles in your long and productive career. Is there any one thing in your previous writing about economics that you would drastically change?

​Yes. When I was a young professor I was certain that (1) people were motivated by profit only and (2) only quantitative evidence was real evidence. Without throwing out what can be learned from watching the profit and measuring things, I have grown to see that (1) and (2) are mistaken.​