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
5 - Biochemist to Economist
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 career as “professional economist” spans more than five decades. Entrance into the economics profession, however, began rather later than usual. I graduated from Brooklyn College in 1950 with majors in chemistry and biology. I never took a course in economics during my undergraduate years.
From 1950 to 1952, I went on to graduate training in biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where I easily completed my courses while working as an instructor in biochemistry at the Medical and Dental Schools of the University of Pennsylvania. I decided to do a PhD thesis on DNA (this was before the discovery of the “double helix”). Although I had enjoyed my teaching duties, I quickly lost interest in biochemical research and withdrew from the program.
Not knowing what I would do for a living, I returned to New York and enrolled at City University of New York in an MBA program to prepare myself for the world of commerce. While there I was required to take a course in the principles of economics. As a biochemist trained in the questions of experimental design and statistical inference, I was appalled by the misuse of empirical data by the leading econometricians of that time.
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- Eminent Economists IITheir Life and Work Philosophies, pp. 72 - 83Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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