WE WILL HAVE THEIR WORKS TO REMEMBER THEM BY.

Last week, we learned of the passing of Edward P. Lazear.

A student of and intellectual successor to economist and Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, Lazear founded the Society of Labor Economists and later served as its president. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics, and also founded the working group on Personnel Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lazear won practically every award labor economics has to offer, including the Leo Melamed Prize, IZA Prize in Labor Economics, the Jacob Mincer Prize, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and designation as Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.

We noted his work with the late Sherwin Rosen on executive compensation as if in a tournament.  National Review's Andrew Stuttaford cited a more recent policy essay that includes  "One surprising finding from my study is that changing a country’s name to eliminate the terms 'socialist,' 'democratic,' or 'people’s' is associated with an 18 percent rise in incomes of the poor over the subsequent years. Of course, it is not the name change per se that helps the poor, but the change in the form of government and the adoption of more market-oriented institutions that accompanies the name change."  We're likely to have more to say along those lines in more specific posts soon to come.

This morning, though, we learned of the passing of Walter Williams.  For a time, he was head of the economics faculty at George Mason, and a regular Festive Season substitute host for Rush Limbaugh (!)  His colleague Veronique de Rugy writes,

The great economist and freedom fighter Walter Williams has died. This is an incredibly sad news. Walter was a great communicator of ideas and a prolific, provocative and uncompromising writer. He was the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University. His voice, his happy-warrior demeanor, his cosmopolitan views, his endless fight on behalf of those with no political voices, and his generosity to all of us at Mason will be missed.

Professor Williams was a regular contributor to Town Hall, and the column he submitted for publication overnight was a necessary reiteration of The State Against Blacks.

If we accept the notion that rotten education is not preordained, then I wonder when the black community will demand an end to an educational environment that condemns so many youngsters to mediocrity. You can bet the rent money that white liberals and high-income blacks would not begin to accept the kind of education for their children that most blacks receive.

It might be fun to put together a course outline for a survey of political economy featuring works by Loury, McCloskey, Sowell, and Williams just to mess with the minds of the usual diversicrats.

It is not given to any of us to finish the task, but we are in a better place to continue thanks to the works of Messrs. Lazear and Williams.  RIP.