On Robert Solow

The last MIT economist of his generation

[Reminder: The LA meetup on Saturday, 12/23 at 10 AM will be at the Green Door. I got the name wrong the other day, but the address is correct. 295 S. Robertson, near the intersections with Gregory.]

In the 1960s, the MIT economics department revolved around Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. By the time I arrived there as a graduate student, in 1976, their important work was behind them. Younger stars, like Stan Fischer, Rudi Dornbusch, and Jerry Hausman were the big shots, along with an endless stream of visiting superstar professors.

Strategically, I would have done better in the academic market had I worked with one of the rising powers on my dissertation, but my thinking about economics aligned much better with Solow’s. You can read my macro memoir if you want to hear more of that story.

In 1980, Solow gave the Presidential Address to the American Economic Association.¹ For comments on earlier drafts, he thanked Paul Samuelson, George Akerlof, James Tobin, and me. The other three all received Nobel Prizes.

My own personal feelings about Solow are marred by one incident. When I was on the job market, I was interviewed by a young faculty member at Amherst. That guy listened to me explain my dissertation, took the idea, and then published it under his own name in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. I wrote to Solow asking what I should do, and he said “____ is wrong, of course,” but told me I should let it go. I did so, but I have never understood how Solow could have been so nonchalant about having me be plagiarized that way. I will never forgive the plagiarist, and I never forgave Solow.

Solow was very sympathetic toward students. He was one of the most popular figures in the entire economics profession.

The Solow Growth Model is probably the GOAT as far as mathematical models are concerned. It derives interesting implications from plausible assumptions. My issue with it, and with neoclassical economics in general, is that the idea of an economy-wide production function, using aggregate labor and aggregate capital, strikes me as too far-fetched, given the role that intangibles play in the economy. Of course, part of the evidence for the role of intangibles comes from Solow’s empirical work based on his model.

It is clear that Solow understood the perils of aggregation. In fact, I think he understood the deeper issues in economics better than any other MIT economist. That is, he grasped the connections between assumptions and conclusions. He knew that mathematics could be both used and misused. He thought that macroeconomic modeling took a wrong turn with the “rational expectations” fad. I agreed with Solow then, and I agree with him now.

Solow was known for his quips. Perhaps his most famous line, first uttered in 1987, was “We see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

Solow seemed to have a genuine hostility toward computers. He never used one, even for email. He preferred to receive typewritten correspondence, and all of his outgoing mail was typed by his secretary. In the late 1990s, although my father was older than Solow and had none of Solow’s facility with mathematics, I was able to get Dad to use a computer for email.

Although Solow was younger than his friends Samuelson, Modigliani, and Kindleberger, and he outlived all of them, he withdrew sooner than they did from attempting original research. By the time I arrived at MIT, Solow was spending his summers on his sailboat and devoting much of his effort to his voluminous correspondence.

My intuition is that underneath the genial and witty exterior, Solow was carrying a lot of anger. I think he disapproved of a lot of the trends in academic economics. He despised the conservative turn in American politics as represented by Ronald Reagan. And there was his mysterious antipathy toward computers.

His wisdom and his intellectual humility are what I will miss the most.

1. The talk is worth reading. One of his best lines:

Unemployed workers rarely try to displace their employed counterparts by offering to work for less … Wouldn't you be surprised if you learned that someone of roughly your status in the profession, but teaching in a less desirable department, had written to your department chairman offering to teach your courses for less money?