ON MAY 4th William Baumol, one of the great economists of the 20th century, died. Mr Baumol, who kept working into his 90s, published more than 500 papers across a dazzling array of topics; his best-known work, describing “cost disease”, was essentially a side-project. He was a scholar whose stray thought on a sleepless night could change how people see the world.
Mr Baumol was born in the South Bronx, attended New York public schools and took an undergraduate degree at the College of the City of New York. Shaped by his family’s left-wing views, in high school he read Karl Marx, which kindled an interest in economics. He did his PhD at the London School of Economics; he defended his dissertation “over whiskies and sodas at the Reform Club”. He spent most of his long career at Princeton University. He had long been on the shortlist for a Nobel prize; sadly, death means he cannot receive one.
His contributions will endure, however. Mr Baumol’s primary intellectual…Continue reading