Organizations and Markets

| Peter Klein |

The University of Missouri’s Kenneth L. Lay Chair of Economics, which we’ve written about before, has been filled, by an internal candidate, Joe Haslag. Joe is a monetary economist who, unlike many macroeconomists, does policy work (some with the controversial Show-Me Institute) and, unlike many economists, is a warm and friendly person. (Did I just write that?)

For those who think that economists, like other social-science and business academics, tend to be overly narrow and specialized, note what Joe says about his patron:

Haslag acknowledged being relatively uninformed about the Enron affair. “Actually, it’s not an episode that’s part of the economics I teach,” he said. “There isn’t anything about the story that entices me to spend a lot of time on it. I couldn’t talk about it with any amount of detail or any analysis.”