April 24, 2021 — A generation of great international economists is passing from the scene. Richard Cooper died on December 23. An American, he was teaching his classes at Harvard until the very end. Robert Mundell, passed away on April 4. Originally Canadian, he was a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. And John Williamson, on April 11. Originally British, he had been the first scholar hired by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
December 24, 2020 — Richard N. Cooper (Dick), who passed away Wednesday evening at the age of 86, was always young for his age. Jim Tobin once told me a story from when Dick was a senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1961-63). He used to bring his bicycle into his office at the Old Executive Office Building. As I remember the story, President Kennedy remarked that apparently a high school student worked at the CEA!
As recently as a year ago, Dick was still riding his bicycle around Cambridge. I would join his wonderful (and young!) family on weekend bike rides along the Charles River.
November 30, 2020 — As Joni Mitchell sang, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” Classroom education was often deemed boring by students and obsolete by tech visionaries. Then the coronavirus made it difficult or impossible to meet in person. The result: We yearn for the irreplaceable in-class experience.
Perhaps the same is true of international economic cooperation.