When several readers of this column reminded me they haven't seen it lately, I replied that I had nothing in mind about which to write. That changed last Monday morning.
I awoke to NPR as they announced the Nobel Prize winners in economics. One of the recipients would be Professor Peter Diamond of MIT. Peter Diamond - after over four decades, that name still invokes terror in my mind.
Berkeley, California, 1963 was an unlikely place for a local farm kid with an unimpressive academic record at Monroe High School. Five years earlier, the typical freshman at UW-Madison was 18, fresh out of high school, and away from home for the first time. I was 21, fresh out of the Marine Corps, and felt like I was back home. We vets were exempt from then-required ROTC and zero credit physical education was another plus to our advantages of age and maturity.
You can't keep a bunch of college boys away from a barrel of beer. With their newfound freedom, availability of suds, and the challenge of college-level academics, a lot of those teenagers were wasting their time and their parents' money, unable or unwilling to do what it takes to excel at UW-Madison. In contrast, we vets were not about to squander the golden opportunity for a good education. That, plus an M.S. degree from Arizona, landed me in the agricultural economics Ph.D. program at UC-Berkeley.
This would be a different ball game than undergraduate work. Top students from all over the world were not about to squander the opportunity for the coveted Berkeley Ph.D. that would set us up for good careers. We could no longer count on irresponsible teenagers to make us look good.
That first semester at Berkeley was the toughest mental challenge I ever faced, up to that time, anyway. We agricultural economics students had to pass some of the same Ph.D. level economic theory classes as the general economics students. It was now second semester, time for the advanced macro-economic theory class.
Enter Peter Diamond.
Peter Diamond was fresh out of MIT, frightfully brilliant, and younger than most of the Ph.D. students he would be teaching. His major professor had been MIT's Paul Samuelson, one of the two or three most influential economists of the 20th Century. Samuelson would later receive the first Nobel Prize in Economics. Readers of this column who studied introductory college economics probably studied from Samuelson's basic economics text, or one written by authors influenced by Samuelson.
In addition to path-breaking theoretician and author of the most widely-used college economics text ever published, Samuelson was an influential policy advisor to presidents and policymakers during the several decades of post WWII prosperity.
The word among us graduate students was that Peter Diamond was Samuelson's most brilliant student ever. He would be lecturing for that Ph.D. macroeconomics course.
There was a significant difference between Samuelson and his youthful protégé, or at least the youthful Peter Diamond of that time. Samuelson could communicate with people less accomplished than he. I have been fortunate to benefit from many outstanding instructors from grade school through college, including UC-Berkeley. Peter Diamond is not among them. Brilliant economists, especially youthful ones, don't necessarily make good instructors.
During one of his tutorial sessions, several of us were pressing Peter Diamond to explain the significance of those equations on the blackboard in English. After stammering for a while, he admitted that he couldn't do it. That's quite a contrast from my favorite economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, who insisted that there are no useful concepts in economics that can't be expressed in clear English.
Life was dismal. After all this, I was going to stumble on Peter Diamond's course. Fortunately, Berkeley's Economics Department didn't give the youthful Peter Diamond complete control of that course. It was co-taught by another eminent economist and elder statesman of the economics profession, Tiber Scitovsky.
Scitovsky's lectures were clear and, thankfully, he wrote half the final exam. Scitovsky wrote one of each pair of eight questions and we had the option of answering either Scitovsky's or Peter Diamond's. Incredibly, I ended up with an "A" in the course I thought I was going to flunk, and surely would have had I been forced to answer Peter Diamond's questions.
Peter Diamond later returned to MIT and performed outstanding research on various practical policy issues. Beyond the economics profession, his did not become a household name until his nomination for the Nobel Prize.
There is another wrinkle to his career-President Obama has nominated him for membership on the Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee. Alabama's Senator Shelby has held up his confirmation on the grounds that decisions should not be made by "board members who are learning on the job."
This is patent nonsense and pure political gamesmanship. Peter Diamond is eminently qualified and has more relevant macroeconomics expertise and experience than most other members of that board.
I have some unsolicited advice for the U.S. Senate. Peter Diamond will raise the competency of the Federal Reserve Board. Confirm him immediately.
That said, I have a piece of unsolicited advice for the Nobel Laureate himself. If you are called upon to testify before the Senate, make sure you explain economic concepts to Shelby and those worthies in the Senate in clearer English than you did to your long-suffering Ph.D. students of decades ago.
But then, that communications gap may well have been my own limitation.
- Monroe resident John Waelti is former Professor of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota and former Head, Department of Agricultural Economics, New Mexico State University. He has also held appointments at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
I awoke to NPR as they announced the Nobel Prize winners in economics. One of the recipients would be Professor Peter Diamond of MIT. Peter Diamond - after over four decades, that name still invokes terror in my mind.
Berkeley, California, 1963 was an unlikely place for a local farm kid with an unimpressive academic record at Monroe High School. Five years earlier, the typical freshman at UW-Madison was 18, fresh out of high school, and away from home for the first time. I was 21, fresh out of the Marine Corps, and felt like I was back home. We vets were exempt from then-required ROTC and zero credit physical education was another plus to our advantages of age and maturity.
You can't keep a bunch of college boys away from a barrel of beer. With their newfound freedom, availability of suds, and the challenge of college-level academics, a lot of those teenagers were wasting their time and their parents' money, unable or unwilling to do what it takes to excel at UW-Madison. In contrast, we vets were not about to squander the golden opportunity for a good education. That, plus an M.S. degree from Arizona, landed me in the agricultural economics Ph.D. program at UC-Berkeley.
This would be a different ball game than undergraduate work. Top students from all over the world were not about to squander the opportunity for the coveted Berkeley Ph.D. that would set us up for good careers. We could no longer count on irresponsible teenagers to make us look good.
That first semester at Berkeley was the toughest mental challenge I ever faced, up to that time, anyway. We agricultural economics students had to pass some of the same Ph.D. level economic theory classes as the general economics students. It was now second semester, time for the advanced macro-economic theory class.
Enter Peter Diamond.
Peter Diamond was fresh out of MIT, frightfully brilliant, and younger than most of the Ph.D. students he would be teaching. His major professor had been MIT's Paul Samuelson, one of the two or three most influential economists of the 20th Century. Samuelson would later receive the first Nobel Prize in Economics. Readers of this column who studied introductory college economics probably studied from Samuelson's basic economics text, or one written by authors influenced by Samuelson.
In addition to path-breaking theoretician and author of the most widely-used college economics text ever published, Samuelson was an influential policy advisor to presidents and policymakers during the several decades of post WWII prosperity.
The word among us graduate students was that Peter Diamond was Samuelson's most brilliant student ever. He would be lecturing for that Ph.D. macroeconomics course.
There was a significant difference between Samuelson and his youthful protégé, or at least the youthful Peter Diamond of that time. Samuelson could communicate with people less accomplished than he. I have been fortunate to benefit from many outstanding instructors from grade school through college, including UC-Berkeley. Peter Diamond is not among them. Brilliant economists, especially youthful ones, don't necessarily make good instructors.
During one of his tutorial sessions, several of us were pressing Peter Diamond to explain the significance of those equations on the blackboard in English. After stammering for a while, he admitted that he couldn't do it. That's quite a contrast from my favorite economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, who insisted that there are no useful concepts in economics that can't be expressed in clear English.
Life was dismal. After all this, I was going to stumble on Peter Diamond's course. Fortunately, Berkeley's Economics Department didn't give the youthful Peter Diamond complete control of that course. It was co-taught by another eminent economist and elder statesman of the economics profession, Tiber Scitovsky.
Scitovsky's lectures were clear and, thankfully, he wrote half the final exam. Scitovsky wrote one of each pair of eight questions and we had the option of answering either Scitovsky's or Peter Diamond's. Incredibly, I ended up with an "A" in the course I thought I was going to flunk, and surely would have had I been forced to answer Peter Diamond's questions.
Peter Diamond later returned to MIT and performed outstanding research on various practical policy issues. Beyond the economics profession, his did not become a household name until his nomination for the Nobel Prize.
There is another wrinkle to his career-President Obama has nominated him for membership on the Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee. Alabama's Senator Shelby has held up his confirmation on the grounds that decisions should not be made by "board members who are learning on the job."
This is patent nonsense and pure political gamesmanship. Peter Diamond is eminently qualified and has more relevant macroeconomics expertise and experience than most other members of that board.
I have some unsolicited advice for the U.S. Senate. Peter Diamond will raise the competency of the Federal Reserve Board. Confirm him immediately.
That said, I have a piece of unsolicited advice for the Nobel Laureate himself. If you are called upon to testify before the Senate, make sure you explain economic concepts to Shelby and those worthies in the Senate in clearer English than you did to your long-suffering Ph.D. students of decades ago.
But then, that communications gap may well have been my own limitation.
- Monroe resident John Waelti is former Professor of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota and former Head, Department of Agricultural Economics, New Mexico State University. He has also held appointments at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
