SFU in the Late 70s, Early 80s

The great economic departments of the world always seem to be great, regardless of who is on the faculty or what year it is: there's a small variance and high average in quality.  At most universities, however, there is a large variance in faculty with a lower average quality.  The
"quality" and "experience" one has (as a student or faculty member) then depends on which group of faculty one happens to interact with.  During those special "top end of the distribution" moments, a little backwater department can be a wonderful intellectual oasis ... for a time.

Simon Fraser, during the late 70s and early 80s was such an oasis.  A place full of great characters in their prime, and I was lucky enough to have a great draw in the teacher lottery.

Ironically, there is a University of Washington loop to the story. 

In 1976 SFU hired Canadian born economist Don Gordon. Don wrote very little over his career, which was mostly spent at UW, but his writings were quite influential. When I was at UW some faculty quipped about Douglass North: "He was smart enough to go drinking with Don Gordon ... and not drink."  In his brief stint at SFU he had a big impact on people, especially Larry Boland. His strong stance on methodology, especially operationalism, drove Larry to write his famous JEL paper on defending Friedman against his critics.

In any event, when Don Gordon left he was replaced by Art Devany, an Alchian trained theorist from UCLA.

  Art DeVany was only at SFU for a couple of years, and only taught one undergraduate course in the fall of 1980. I took that course, and my life was never the same.   Somewhere around October of that year I had an economic epiphany when it dawned on me that ``costs don't determine prices, prices are determined by supply and demand,''  and after that thinking like an economist just came naturally.  Art was a very mathematical economist, but he never used math in class. So his classes had the rigor of mathematical thought, but were expressed verbally with a few graphs. I practically hung on every one. Art was very fit, and after he retired he  became world famous promoting his views on fitness and diet.  He eventually published his ideas in "Evolutionary Fitness."   His views on those dimensions are great and effective as well.

When Art was hired the SFU president, Pauline Jewett, insisted another senior hire had to made ... and it had to be a Canadian.  This led to the hiring of John Chant (see below).


   Chris Hall.   He showed up in 1981, of all things to teach a statistics service course for Resource Management.  It was a disaster, and caused some frictions between economics and RM for some years.   Perhaps because the department was contractually stuck with him for a couple of years, or more likely because John Chant and Tom Borcherding recognized his economic genius, he landed up teaching honors price theory.  By 1983/84 he was gone, off to Hong Kong.   He had a crazy mind that was relentless in coming up with economic ideas and ways of testing them.  Many people described him as Steven Cheung cubed.  I took honors price theory from him in the spring of 1982.  On the midterm he asked the question "what are transaction costs?"   I gave an answer and he gave me zero points for it.  So I asked him "well, what are transaction costs?"  "I don't know," was his reply.  "I just know your answer is wrong."  Well, that obviously set me on a path for the next few years.  Later in the fall of 1982 I took a "topics" course with Chris.  There was Chris, Clyde Reed, a phd student, and me ... it was an intensive learning experience.   I wrote my differential tax paper in that course.  Chris later encouraged me to submit it to the graduate paper prize at Economic Inquiry, and surprisingly I won. It became my first publication.  In the spring of 1983 I sat in on his graduate price theory class.  So, in the period of one year he had a huge influence on my thinking.   In many ways, my book "The Institutional Revolution" has its roots in Chris's classes.  This picture, the only known picture of him,  was taken at Yoram's 2014 retirement party.

  I met Tom Borcherding in the fall of 1982, when I took my first graduate micro class.  In many ways, he was the opposite of Art DeVany. He was all over the map, lacked in mathematical skills, probably never exercised a day in his life, and had  a very "colorful" vocabulary.  I used to love getting him angry in class because he would turn three difference shades of purple. But he also loved getting angry, and he respected me for doing it and he became a bit of a professional mentor for me.  Throughout my time in graduate school and my early days as a professor he was always interested in what I was up to, always introducing me to various people in the profession, and constantly encouraging me to step out of my comfort zone.  He was a great letter writer, and he loved talking on the phone.  He passed away of a heart attack, Feb. 2014.

In Feb. of 2014 a number of SFU retired faculty who were around at that time gathered at  a local pub to remember Tom.  Given they were all retired, the event started at 3:30 and ended at 5:30. Here's the group.



From left to right we have: Mike Roberts (geography and family friend), Clyde Reed, Herb Grubel, James Dean, John Richards, Jack Knetch, me, Rob Grauer, and John Chant.

John Chant organized this event, and little did he realize that this was probably only the second time in history that my MA committee was together.  John was my supervisor, Clyde my second, and John Richards the external examiner.

I met John in 1983 after a phd defense that didn't go particularly well for some poor student. Both Tom and Chris had left by this time, and I was looking for a thesis supervisor for my MA.  John was clearly the intellectual leader in the department, and I wanted him to supervise me, but I'd not taken a course from him.  I think within minutes of our first meeting he agreed to get involved.  That was January 1984 and when he agreed I handed him my thesis, already finished in my mind.  John then did something that changed my professional life. He said something to the effect "The economics is fine, but you're a terrible writer. Take the next three months, work on your writing skills, and then rewrite the thesis."  I took him seriously, and it has made a huge difference in my career.

John read my project several times, and on the day of my defense he took me to the faculty club for lunch before my defense. Given my extreme arrogance at the time, I made the remark (which John has never forgotten) "I hope this isn't a typical defense where everyone is reluctant to ask questions."  John just nodded.

When we got to the room for the defense, I thought I'd pull one over on Clyde.  I was convinced he had not read my work, and so rather than presenting my research I said (and I can't believe I did this) "I'm not going to present my results, I'm just going to answer questions."  Unfortunately for me, John Richards was the first to go ... and he took a little offense to my remark and had a lot of questions. Doubly unfortunate for me, Clyde, an extremely gifted economic thinker, had read my stuff and easily picked up where JR had left off.  JC on the other hand, felt an obligation to pick up where our lunch had left off and decided to grill me on everything he could come up with.  This went on for an hour and a half.  The typical defense was about 20 min.  I was exhausted. But it didn't end there! John C, Clyde, and I went back to John's office and I got grilled for another hour and a half.  As I drove home that night it dawned on me:  "I wonder if I passed?"  I couldn't remember. 

The lesson was not lost, at least. When I defended my phd thesis I was extremely polite, didn't argue with anyone, made a nice little presentation vague enough not to encourage questions, and was in and out in about 10 minutes!

I never took a course from Herb Grubel, who was the star of the department in the 1970s. But that was more a matter of scheduling.  I did TA for him once and enjoyed his missionary approach to economics. Later, when I joined the faculty he was very kind and supportive of me.  He left as a member of Parliament in 1994, and as we moved to a same building at that time I managed to get his office.  When he returned from Ottawa I think he had forgotten about the office and retired soon afterwards.  As a result, I'm still in the nice corner! 

I didn't take any courses from James Dean or Rob Grauer either.  Both became friends after I joined the faculty.  Ironically, I did take a course (right after Art's) from Jack who later left our department when I arrived.  He had an assignment for his class to "write an original paper."  I'd never been given that freedom before, and I loved getting my hands dirty. In many ways, that was the beginning of my writing career.  Jack, along with Herb, both saw academics as a "calling."  Jack was one of the founders of "behavioral economics" and was always a little disappointed in me for not following along.  But not so disappointed he wouldn't send me his working papers.  He died in 2022, at the age of 89, but the remarkable thing for me was that we'd been having an email debate on his latest paper just 3 weeks prior. 

Missing from the group was Larry Boland who in the 1980s had a great moment in the sun in terms of publishing in the top journals.  I was able to take two courses from him, and although they were strange, they gave me an appreciation for ideas outside the neoclassical hegemony. Also missing were Zane Spindler, Peter Kennedy, Don Devoretz, and Steve Easton.


They were an eclectic group, and they didn't always get along.  But for me they provided a great environment for learning, and I'll always be grateful.

Getting back to the UW loop:

Don Gordon (UW faculty) ... leads to John Chant, who was trained at Duke but learned his economics from John McManus at Carleton (John was self taught, but shared an office with Steve Cheung at Chicago in 1968ish, Cheung of course was at UW and must have influenced John McManus.) ... Chris Hall (UW phd) ... Art Devany (UCLA, but that's almost UW), Tom Borcherding (UW faculty) ... and Clyde Reed (UW phd) ... which all led to me (UW phd) who completed the loop by coming back in 1990 as SFU faculty.