Advocates for workers’ rights and Olin economics professor Glenn MacDonald don’t agree on the motivation behind Wal-Mart’s announcement that it will boost pay for half a million workers. Read the opposing opinions in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch story, “Wal-Mart boosts employee pay because it had to.”
Image: Business Insider
Murray Weidenbaum, PhD, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences and honorary chairman of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, died Thursday, March 20, 2014, in St. Louis. He was 87.
Murray Weidenbaum
A highly influential economist and policy adviser, Weidenbaum has a legacy in the academic and governmental realms that began in the early 1960s. He served as the first chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“Murray Weidenbaum was an important and influential economist, a great educator and scholar, and a wonderful colleague,” said Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “Washington University was fortunate to have him as a part of our community for so long.
“He was a wise and trusted university colleague for about 50 years, and we have many reasons to be proud of the ongoing scholarship that takes place at the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University.”
“Not long before he passed,” Wrighton said, “I had the great privilege of meeting with Murray and informing him that the university has established the Murray Weidenbaum Distinguished Professorship in Economics.”
“I know he was pleased – as are his colleagues – that his name will continue to live on here at Washington University, but he will surely be missed by all those who had the honor to know and work with him,” Wrighton said.
During his career, Weidenbaum served under or advised five U.S. presidents, spending much of the time teaching, writing and conducting research. During the administrations of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, he served on the staffs of what was then known as the U.S. Bureau of the Budget.
Read the complete WUSTL News obituary here
http://youtu.be/ECNEAfLy5dw
He plays guitar, composes electronic dance music, fences, runs, practices yoga, researches game theory, and he teaches economics! Meet Professor Glenn MacDonald, a renaissance man who takes the dismal out of the dismal science and does his best to make econ class entertaining and enlightening for Olin freshmen and Executive MBA students. MacDonald also teaches a course on the business of the entertainment industry that attracts top students as well as stars from Hollywood, Nashville, New York and L.A. Get to know Prof. MacDonald in this video.
Who needs the Super Bowl when you can field a team led by all stars like Ben Bernanke who flex brain power over brawn in the fantasy league for economists? It started as an April Fool’s joke, but the virtual game for building your ideal economics team to compete against other teams of highly ranked economists is REAL. It was launched by the Ideas Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
It’s called the RePEc Fantasy League, named for the REsearch Papers in EConomics, a database and author service that collects and disseminates the latest research in Economics and related sciences. RePEc also generates a monthly ranking of economists and players draft or draw their team from the ranking pool. Deceased economists are not included in league, so roll over John Maynard Keynes, you’ve been benched.
Douglass C. North
We’d love to hear from anyone who is active in the Econ Fantasy League.
Have you drafted or traded any Wash U economists? Who’s hot?
Nobel Prize winner and WUSTL Professor Doug North would be my first pick.
Photo credits: Keynes, NPR; North, WUSTL news
