HONORING THE MIDNIGHT ECONOMIST.

Long time readers, and more than a few of the introductory price theory students I had the opportunity to work with, will recognize my debt to the various versions of Armen Alchian and William Allen's University Economics.

I consider myself fortunate to have learned intermediate price theory out of George Stigler's The Theory of Price and Alchian and William Allen's Exchange and Production, rather than out of the Henderson-and-Quandt-stripped-of-Lagrangians canonical texts of the day. I'm not sure my students agree, as it is my penchant to ask questions that require them to develop their intuition in quirky ways, rather than scribble a figure or calculate an elasticity.

The organizing principles don't have to be buried in formulas and graphs, and students who develop their intuition are in a better place to make sense of the formulas, should the professor not present the intuition behind the formula.

Gary Galles, who studied with Professor Allen, has compiled a collection of economic insights from University Economics, the various "Midnight Economist" essays, and elsewhere.  Here is an observation that people who tell you "It is for your own good" ought respect.  "Each person is the appropriate, relevant judge of his own condition…no matter what the preferences and assessments of others may be."  There's also a variation on a passage I worked into the survey of public policy course.  "Much of our misery has stemmed from dumb economics—inefficient institutions, inappropriate property fights, wasteful processes, debilitating policies."  The passage I preferred read something like "The world has suffered more tyranny and misery than necessary because people have embraced, or had imposed upon them, dumb economics."  That passage summarizes exactly what the public health mitigation measures are doing.  RIP.