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
1 - Being There: An Intellectual Journey
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
My life and work philosophies, you say? Do I have such things? And if I do, who would care to read about them? Tough questions. But until you know for whom you are writing, it’s hard to know what to write. The best answer I could come up with is that, maybe, some students of economics, both undergraduate and graduate, could benefit from my experiences and postjudices. So, mindful of the dangers of self-indulgence, I have penned this essay with students in mind. It’s a career road map, of sorts, but one that benefits from the 20–20 vision of hindsight.
We economists believe deeply in equilibrium models – not to mention rational equilibrium models without hysteresis. But life is not like that. More commonly, it is governed by accidents that leave lasting imprints – paths taken and not taken. That certainly includes my own professional career even though, on paper, it looks like I marched lockstep through a boringly preprogrammed life cycle: an economics major in college, straight on to graduate school in economics, and then straight onto the Princeton economics faculty, where I remain to this day. No apparent deviations or afterthoughts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eminent Economists IITheir Life and Work Philosophies, pp. 14 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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