MIT held a conference in memory of Robert Solow. He supervised my dissertation (among many others, including Alan Blinder’s and Glenn Loury’s).

Robert Solow Memorial Conference - by Arnold Kling

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2024-05-06 16:00:03

MIT held a conference in memory of Robert Solow. He supervised my dissertation (among many others, including Alan Blinder’s and Glenn Loury’s). Solow did his important work in his thirties, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1987. I last saw him in person in 1980, when I was finishing up my dissertation 1 . At that point, at age 56, he was neither publishing research in major journals nor promoting himself as a public intellectual 2 . Instead, he adopted the persona of elder statesman of the profession, a role which he continued to play well into his 90s. He died last year at age 99.

Larry Summers, one of the last speakers at the conference, points out how members of Solow’s generation of economists were committed to the belief that economic policy is important. They shared a conviction that the Great Depression, which they lived through, could have been avoided at almost no cost with policies of Keynesian stimulus.

More recently, a generation of Democratic policy wonks became convinced that the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 could have been avoided at almost no cost with more stimulus. This preference for high demand carried over into the Biden Administration, with adverse consequences for inflation. Larry admits that part of him is sympathetic to the pro-stimulus view, but part of him worries about whether it poses dangers. Like me, Larry thinks that at some point if the government creates enough paper wealth that is bound to be inflationary.