December 29, 2022
I’m saddened to hear of the passing of Yoram Barzel. Barzel was an economist’s economist. Here’s a snippet from his obituary:
Barzel arrived at the University of Chicago to study for his doctorate at the peak of the "Chicago School" era, which he described as "electrifying. . . . The atmosphere of total involvement was contagious. You couldn't spend two minutes in the company of most graduate students without hearing about the marginal cost of something." He applied his keen economic reasoning across four books and dozens of papers on such topics as innovation, taxation, information costs, the emergence of the state, waiting, voting, slavery, and measurement. After receiving his PhD in 1961 he moved to the Pacific Northwest with his family to begin teaching at the University of Washington during its heyday as a hub of applied price theory. An inveterate observer of economic behavior in everyday life, in his retirement speech after over 50 years in the department he admitted, "I have no plans to retire" and happily continued working until the very end. Co-written with Doug Allen, the third edition of his book Economic Analysis of Property Rights (Cambridge University Press, 1989; 1997) was completed in the fall of 2022. In 2017 he received the Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, and the Journal of Institutional Economics published a special issue devoted to his work in 2019. A detailed essay about his research appears in Economists of the Twentieth Century (2000).
Many people will highlight his 1982 paper on measurement costs, his paper on waiting as a form of rationing, his famous paper on taxation, or his small, but masterful treatise on property rights (new edition forthcoming).
A few of my favorites, which I think are underrated, include his paper on the “entrepreneur’s reward for self-policing” wherein he considers which party will own the firm and a more recent paper on “organizational forms” (which Sebastian Anastasi and I are currently drawing on for a paper).
For more on Barzel:
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Here’s his own remembrance of Doug North
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A special issue by the Journal of Institutional Economics, edited by my friends, Ennio Piano and Rosolino Candela, on Barzel’s thought
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Doug Allen’s write-up (from years ago) about the impact of Barzel on his own impressive research career
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Vincent Geloso summarizes his favorite Barzel papers. Tyler Cowen calls him “one of the great microeconomists.”
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An (old) fascinating reflection by Dean Lueck
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I also wrote a piece for AIER that draws on his ideas
When I started this blog, I cited him as an inspiration. I remember reading once that George Stigler—Barzel’s dissertation adviser—once remarked that there was nothing wrong with Barzel’s dissertation—other than it being “terribly boring” (or something to that effect).
Well, he fixed that, and we’re all the better economists for it.