Prompted by Tyler’s reminiscences

We entered MIT in 1976, which means we hit the job market during a recession (1980). For that reason, and others, we were underachievers by MIT standards. (Just preceding us were Krugman, Bernanke, and Rogoff, and just after us was Paul Romer).

“Most likely to succeed” based on classroom performance were Dave Germany and John Huizinga, both macroeconomists. John is well ensconced at the University of Chicago Business School. Dave, like me, failed to get a good academic job offer, and never got back on the academic track.

I think that Maury Obstfeld and Gene Grossman ended up the most accomplished academically. They are both at top 10 departments. In grad school, they were known for their hard work more than anything else.

Bill Dickens is known for his work on the Flynn effect and for attending my co-blogger’s Capla-Con festival for game nerds . I think Bill is at Northeastern in Boston.

My best friends were Alan Marcus and Bob McDonald, both of whom wrote dissertations in finance (MIT had Robert Merton and Fischer Black as professors in those days). Both teach at business schools. Alan is at Boston College and Bob is at Northwestern. Another friend, Jeff Daskin, who was in industrial organization, works for a big consulting firm. Al Jacobs also went into consulting, and I believe he sometimes reads this blog, or used to.

Bob Cumby did well in international economics–he teaches at Georgetown. Marjorie Flavin is in macro at UC San Diego. Shulamit Kahn is in the business school at Boston University.

David Modest also did finance. He joined the infamous Long Term Capital Management, and according to the Roger Lowenstein account Dave was one of the good guys, who foresaw some of the problems they would have.

Several foreign students. I ran into Gippi Galli in Italy a few years ago. I ran into Maurice Boissiere’s son during my Internet entrepreneuring days, and he looked just like his dad did 20 years earlier. The son helped launch ComScore, which is now the Nielsen ratings of the Internet.

Several folks whose faces I can picture but the names escape me for now.