Monday, May 15, 2017

In Praise of William J. Baumol, Economist Who Identified Market Imperfections

On May 4th, Professor William J. Baumol died at the age of 95. He was a prodigious writer and innovator in economic theory, author of some 500 papers over the more than half a century he taught at Princeton University and NYU.  At least once, he was reportedly on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Economics, and if anyone deserved it, he did. I’ve read a couple of the obituaries of Prof. Baumol and I thought they missed the point of much of his work so I’d like to add my own.