Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Being There: An Intellectual Journey
- 2 Social Norms in Economics and in the Economics Profession
- 3 Personal Reflections on My Professional Life
- 4 Gray Eminence?
- 5 Biochemist to Economist
- 6 Puzzles and Paradoxes: A Life in Applied Economics
- 7 Succeeding in Economics
- 8 My Research Strategy
- 9 My Philosophy of Economics, Life, and Everything (Not!)
- 10 Finding a Niche
- 11 Become an Economist – See the World
- 12 Practitioner of the Dismal Science? Who, Me? Couldn’t Be!!
- 13 One Job, Four Careers
- 14 My Life and Research Strategy
- 15 How I Ended Up Being a Multifaceted Economist and the Mentors I Have Had
- 16 Searching for My Personal Philosophy
- 17 Learning about the Evolving International Economy
- 18 Confessions of a Wellesley FEM
- 19 God, Ants, and Thomas Bayes
- 20 The Path of a Monetary Economist
- 21 Learning from the Field
- 22 Order in and through Disorder: The Invisible Hand as a Turbulent Regulator
- 23 The Education of an Economist
- 24 Faith, Science, and Religion
- 25 My Studies in International Economics
- 26 Sailing into the Wind
- 27 My Life and Work Philosophy
- 28 Scaling Fortress Economics
- 29 The Accidental Economist
- Index
- References
21 - Learning from the Field
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Being There: An Intellectual Journey
- 2 Social Norms in Economics and in the Economics Profession
- 3 Personal Reflections on My Professional Life
- 4 Gray Eminence?
- 5 Biochemist to Economist
- 6 Puzzles and Paradoxes: A Life in Applied Economics
- 7 Succeeding in Economics
- 8 My Research Strategy
- 9 My Philosophy of Economics, Life, and Everything (Not!)
- 10 Finding a Niche
- 11 Become an Economist – See the World
- 12 Practitioner of the Dismal Science? Who, Me? Couldn’t Be!!
- 13 One Job, Four Careers
- 14 My Life and Research Strategy
- 15 How I Ended Up Being a Multifaceted Economist and the Mentors I Have Had
- 16 Searching for My Personal Philosophy
- 17 Learning about the Evolving International Economy
- 18 Confessions of a Wellesley FEM
- 19 God, Ants, and Thomas Bayes
- 20 The Path of a Monetary Economist
- 21 Learning from the Field
- 22 Order in and through Disorder: The Invisible Hand as a Turbulent Regulator
- 23 The Education of an Economist
- 24 Faith, Science, and Religion
- 25 My Studies in International Economics
- 26 Sailing into the Wind
- 27 My Life and Work Philosophy
- 28 Scaling Fortress Economics
- 29 The Accidental Economist
- Index
- References
Summary
Let me first extend my thanks to Michael Szenberg and his colleagues for inviting me to contribute a chapter to this distinguished volume. It has given me an opportunity to rethink some of the foundations of my own work.
While many of the economists who have contributed to this volume began their academic journeys in high school or college, mine did not begin until I was a graduate student at UCLA in the early 1960s. As a poor kid born in the Depression (1933), my early years were focused primarily on survival. We were fortunate to have a relatively large backyard in our home in Los Angeles, where we had a variety of fruit trees and room to plant a vegetable garden. As a kid, I learned how to garden and also how to preserve fruits by standing over a hot stove to can them. Now I must confess that the long, hot August days that I spent canning peaches and apricots are not my favorite memories of my childhood, but I certainly learned a lot about the household economics of a poor family – long before I studied these problems in developing countries.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eminent Economists IITheir Life and Work Philosophies, pp. 316 - 337Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
(1992). Dividing the Waters: Governing Groundwater in Southern California. San Francisco: ICS Press.Google Scholar
and (2008). “Deliberation, Learning, and Institutional Change: The Evolution of Institutions in Judicial Settings,” Constitutional Political Economy 19, no. 3: 180–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1985). The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1964). American Industry: Structure, Conduct, Performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
(1952). Resource Conservation, Economics, and Policies. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
(1970). Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas. New York: Committee for Economic Development.Google Scholar
(1972). Reducing Crime and Assuring Justice. New York: Committee for Economic Development.Google Scholar
(1966). “The Metropolis and the Maze of Local Government,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 2: 68–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1957). “Metropolitan Organization,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 314: 57–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1970). The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
, , and (1960). Water Supply: Economics, Technology and Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(1972). “Consumers’ Perception of Police Performance: Consolidation vs. Deconcentration – The Case of Grand Rapids, Michigan Metropolitan Area.” PhD dissertation, Indiana University.
(1964). “The Structure of Government and Public Investment.” American Economic Review 54 (May): 236–342.Google Scholar
(1964). “Divergences between Institution and Total Costs within Government,” American Economic Review 54 (May): 243–249.Google Scholar
. 1959. The Theory of Public Finance: A Study in Public Economy. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
(1978). “Structure and Performance: The Task of Economic History,” Journal of Economic Literature 16: 963–978.Google Scholar
(1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2005). Understanding the Process of Institutional Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
(1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
(1965). “Public Entrepreneurship: A Case Study in Ground Water Basin Management.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
(1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2010). “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems,” American Economic Review 100, no. 3 (June): 641–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (1973). Community Organization and the Provision of Police Services. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
, , and (1994). Rules, Games, and Common Pool Resources. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1973). “Suburban Police Departments: Too Many and Too Small?” in and (eds.), The Urbanization of the Suburbs, 367–402. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
, , et al. (1975). “Measuring Urban Street Conditions,” in Measuring Urban Services: A Multi-Mode Approach, pamphlet 2, Portfolio of Professional Papers on Measuring Urban Services (Measures Project). Bloomington: Indiana University, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.Google Scholar
and (1974). “Community Control and Governmental Responsiveness: The Case of Police in Black Neighborhoods,” in and (eds.), Improving the Quality of Urban Management, 303–334. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
(1999). “Polycentricity” (parts 1 and 2), in (ed.), Polycentricity and Local Public Economies: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, 52–74, 119–138. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
, , and (1961). “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry,” American Political Science Review 55, no. 4: 831–842.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1984). “Linking Subjective and Objective Measures of Performance,” in (ed.), Understanding Police Agency Performance, 148–159. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.Google Scholar
(1985). “Metropolitan Structure and Systemic Performance: The Case of Police Service Delivery,” in and (eds.), Policy Implementation in Federal and Unitary Systems, 161–191. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1999). “Do We Really Want to Consolidate Urban Areas? [It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again],” in (ed.), Polycentricity and Local Public Economies: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, 349–351. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
, , , , , , , , , and (1981). “Consumers as Coproducers of Public Services: Some Economic and Institutional Considerations,” Policy Studies Journal 9, no. 7: 1001–1011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2010). Working Together: Collective Action, the Commons, and Multiple Methods in Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and . 1974. “Metropolitan Report: Citizen Evaluations of Performance in Nashville–Davidson County, Tennessee,” Publius 4, no. 4: 19–34.Google Scholar
(1936). The Theory of Economic Development, trans. . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
(1979). “Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting Models,” American Journal of Political Science 23, no. 1: 27–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1957a). Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
(1978). “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” American Economic Review 68, no. 2: 1–17.Google Scholar
(2010). “Natural Forces, Human Choices: An Over Time Study of Responses to Biophysical and Human Induced Disturbance in Los Angeles, California Groundwater Governance.” PhD dissertation, Indiana University.
(1964). The Economics of Discretionary Behavior: Managerial Objectives in a Theory of the Firm. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
(1967). “Hierarchical Control and Optimum Firm Size,” Journal of Political Economy 75, no. 2: 123–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar