My former colleague Robert Tollison has passed away. I still remember the tour of Carow Hall he gave me when I was interviewing in 1997. Though we only overlapped at GMU for one year, he was an unforgettable personality. My strongest memory: At a Liberty Fund in Bozeman, Montana in the summer of 1997, someone expressed despair at economists’ inability to improve the world. Tollison responded with this aphorism, which I’ve repeated ever since:
“We’re all part of the equilibrium.”
His point: It’s a huge world, so no individual can reasonably
expect to make a visible difference. But each of us pushes the world just a smidge in his desired direction – and our small efforts add up. In the end, Tollison inspired
my paper on how economists can (and do) change the world.
Farewell, Bob. I’ll miss you.