This covers high school, college, and graduate school.
My high school AP chemistry teacher, Dr. Frank Quiring, was an unforgettable character. I picture him with a broad grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, saying “Isn’t chemistry beautiful?” He did not just teach a chemical law or theory. He described the observations or experiments that led scientists to formulate the theory. Often, they were trying to deal with anomalies (think of Rutherford). I think I absorbed the idea of watching out for anomalies.
A classmate recalls that the spring of our junior year, Dr. Quiring gathered those of us who were going to be starting his class in the fall and told us that we were “morally obligated to get a 5 on the AP exam.” Even though I fulfilled that moral obligation, when I told him that I was planning to take organic chemistry as a freshman in college, he advised me not to. I took that as a vote of no confidence in me pursuing science, and I took computer science instead.
The most influential course I took in college might have been a one-credit “statistics for economists” class. I might put it this way: Statistics is all Bayes’ Theorem; the rest is commentary.
In my junior and senior years of college, I took three economics seminars, all with Bernie Saffran: Economic Theory, a two-credit seminar; Public Finance, another two-credit seminar (the usual professor for that was on sabbatical); and Econometrics, a four-credit seminar.
Bernie was another unforgettable character. One of his pet phrases that I remember is “I’m willing to be wrong.” It was his way of saying, “I have an open mind on this. But give me a reason to change it.”
Bernie explained the economic theory of what is now called a Universal Basic Income. It appalls me how often people describe UBI as “paying people not to work.” This is not thinking like an economist–but I have even seen Ph.D economists talk that way! See my essay on the UBI.
I think Bernie conditioned me to reject “happiness research.” He put on his door the quote from George Bernard Shaw, “Do not do unto others as they would do unto you. They may have different tastes.” He illustrated the intractability of the problem of creating a social welfare function by saying, “Suppose I claim to get infinite utility from each scoop of ice cream no matter how much I eat. Then the social optimum is for everyone to work to give me ice cream, and I just consume ice cream all day, acting as a pure util producer. My utils maximize social welfare.”
For his econometric seminar, you had to write a paper. First, you had to replicate a published study. Then you had to try to improve on it in some way. He said that the replication part was usually difficult, and often impossible.
I tried to replicate a classic study of agricultural supply curves, done by Marc Nerlove. This study introduced the idea of “adaptive expectations,” with price expectations a geometrically decaying function of past prices. While other students often had to guess what data to use to try to replicate (economists did not publish their data in those days), I knew that I was using exactly the data that Nerlove used. He gave the source, which was a unique publication that I had to photocopy in the library at the University of Pennsylvania.
My replication attempt failed. Running the same regression as Nerlove, the coefficients I got were not even close to his. Either he miscalculatd (he would have had to invert a matrix by hand to calculate regression coefficients, while I used a mainframe computer) or he just flat out made up his numbers.
For grad school, I went to MIT. A few years ago, a classmate and I were reminiscing, and he remarked “Except for Solow, they were all terrible teachers.” I gravitated toward Solow. He was not a player of the student-placement game the way Dornbusch and Fischer were, so from an academic career standpoint that was a bad choice. So be it.
Solow did not push fancy mathematics. He thought that often the best way to start to think about a model was to write down a specific numerical example. Or if you had some data and you were thinking that x might have a nonlinear influence on y, he would not suggest fitting some fancy nonlinear model to the data. Instead, he would suggest dividing the sample into two sub-samples, with the low values of x in one and the high values of x in the other. Then estimate a linear relationship in each sub-sample, and see if the slopes differ.
Although Solow coined the phrase “amateur sociology” to describe the dangers of economists straying from the homo economicus world of incentivized individuals, he understood that the relevant margin to work on in order to understand the causes of fluctuations in unemployment and inflation was not to be found in stochastic difference equations.
In his Nobel Prize lecture, Solow said
One can not do macroeconomics without aggregative relationships; and at least for the moment there is no substitute for macroeconomics
I eventually came to agree with the first part and to disagree with the second part. If you want to know more about where this led me, read Specialization and Trade or the more condensed version Economics After the Virus.
This is fun to read.
Did you ever have a teacher who you remember for his/her private encouragement? You have one mention of a discouragement (Quiring). Maybe not intellectual influence in terms of ideas, but that you had a special mind, etc.
Yes, interesting influences and well worth reading.
Still thinking about Marc Nerlove.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Nerlove
Interesting. One doubts that this anecdote is atypical. Way too much public funding has been going to academics for way too long. If all the papers being churned out have any value at all, why don’t we just let the journals pay for their production. That would be the “free market” approach. It’s not like the publishers are going broke already selling access for an arm and a leg, and it works for books.
Re: “I think Bernie conditioned me to reject ‘happiness research.’ He put on his door the quote from George Bernard Shaw, ‘Do not do unto others as they would do unto you. They may have different tastes.'”
I would distinguish ‘happiness research’ (empirical inquiry) from the Golden Rule (a maxim).
a) Happiness research.
To my surprise, most of my favorite public intellectuals consider happiness research shallow or paternalistic. They paint with too broad a brush. There are many interesting, important findings in happiness research. See, for example, David Blanchflower’s outline of recent findings, at the link below:
https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2216/files/2020/06/despair-unhappiness-and-Age.pdf
And here are insights from Blanchflower’s and Carol Graham’s new NBER paper:
“Life satisfaction in the US follows a U-shape during working age, from eighteen through retirement, with a mid-life low in the mid-forties. […] The United States is different, not least as it has higher marriage rates, a lower mean age at first marriage and higher divorce rates than other advanced countries. […] The differences that we find across the married and the non-married in the U.S., with larger gaps and a steeper drop in mid-life than in countries of comparable income levels is a new finding. While we cannot fully explain this, we think it is due to the strong marriage norms in the U.S., which result in people getting married earlier – but also in divorcing more later. Part of this reflects differences in income and education, as wealthier and more educated people are more likely to stay married, while less wealthy and [less] educated people are more likely to divorce or to not marry.”—Happiness and Aging in the United States, NBER Working Paper 28143 (November 2020), pp. 11-12.
b) George Bernard Shaw’s supposed rebuttal of the Golden Rule.
The literal meaning of the Golden Rule is: Treat others as they would treat you. This is something like speculative tit-for-tat, or conditional good will. However, the everyday understanding (the ‘illocutionary force’) of the Golden Rule is: Treat others as you would like them to treat you. This is a maxim of unilateral decency, tolerance, good will. Shaw rebuts only the literal meaning, not the everyday interpretation. He construes the clause, “as they would do unto you,” as a pessimistic empirical premise: ‘they want to impose their tastes on you.’ Shaw is saying, Don’t meddle with them, although they like to meddle with you. A maxim of unilateral tolerance, rather than tit-for-tat. Shaw’s maxim (Don’t meddle) actually is a special case of the everyday interpretation of the Golden Rule (Treat others as you would like them to treat you).
The internet tells me that George Bernard Shaw wrote: “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.” In this different quotation, Shaw interprets the traditional Golden Rule to mean: Act as though others share your individual tastes. He misconstrues the traditional Golden Rule, which is instead a maxim of unilateral tolerance, decency, good will. He rightly reminds us not to assume that others share our individual tastes; but he makes his point wrongly, by cleverly violating the principle of textual charity in his interpretation of the traditional Golden Rule.
“It appalls me how often people describe UBI as ‘paying people not to work.’”
Yeah, it is outrageous to imply that we are paying people not to work with UBI, particularly from phd economists.
But, wait just a second…UBI does actually sounds like we are paying people not to work. And, in actuality we are paying people not to work and there are zero mechanisms to ensure that they will spend their UBI windfalls prudently. Total loser proposition for the average taxpayer.
Do any economists have any background in the social loafing literature or are they just confined to corkball theory?
Those saying that UBI pays people not to work are probably the same simpletons and con artists who contend that “defund the police” means “defund the police.”
Yep, I’m not gonna lie. I’m for sure one of those simpletons.
“On Wednesday, the council took its first stab at deciding where a chunk of that money — nearly $88.8 million — should go. So far, council members are looking to put much of the money toward nuts-and-bolts city services: street resurfacing, graffiti removal, alley cleanups and many other core city programs.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-09/lapd-funds-george-floyd-disenfranchised-areas-plan-under-fire
“Suppose I claim to get infinite utility from each scoop of ice cream . . . .” Really, now: *claiming* it doesn’t make it *true*!
Bernie’s ice cream analogy is basically Robert Nozick’s idea of a ‘utility monster.’ I think Nozick used cookies, and he published it first in 1974, presumably after you (Arnold) graduated from college, so who knows, maybe Nozick ‘scooped’ Bernie (pun intended).
My AP chemistry teacher, Mr. Geeghan, was also a remarkable motivator+educator. Almost everyone in his class got a 4 or 5 on the AP (in a public high school). The other science teachers were quite jealous of the interest he generated among his students. Solow was one of my professors for Macro, basically he taught us the Solow model. I feel that Solow has many very important insights into the problems of the field of macroeconomics and the desired direction, but he is not willing to engage his opponents and make a forceful case. He often acts as a sniper instead, and snipers can’t win wars.
First, all these intellectual histories are great.
Really fantastic, with real insight, plus inconsistencies.
Second, UBI pays people “enough to live on” without working. It’s a bad idea and remains a terrible idea because most low IQ folk aren’t looking to get rich, or really get ahead. They just want a good time.
“I just want to get some kicks.
I just want to get some chicks.”
Sex & drugs & Rock ‘n roll is enough for lots of folk. And, with ever better video games, why not play all day like in an opium den?
Yes, maybe 10%, maybe 20% won’t waste over two years having no job, no additional schooling.
But it would work, at around $10,000 / yr …
In theory.
In your dreams. (Is there really much difference between the dreams and theories of intellectuals? I’d guess Mr. Merle K wouldn’t think so.)
I’m sure that a Job Guarantee program would work better for those who would work with UBI, and also much much better for most of those in the majority of the current bottom 20% (of adult US citizens) who would choose no work with UBI, but many of them will accept some given tasks by some gov’t / private partnership.
Plus it’s possible that a voluntary National Service could learn how to motivate more of today’s losers.