One of the delights I had on my trip to Boise State University last week was getting to know my host Allen Dalton, an adjunct economics professor at BSU. Besides having great economics discussions, we had good discussions, mainly positive, about various economists we know in common.
One positive story stands out. Allen started as a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA when James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock were still there. One day in 1977, early in his time at VA Tech, he got a message to see Tullock right away. Tullock offered to pay him $25 a week to go through the newspaper once a week and record the closing prices of shares in about 10 or so companies whose shares Tullock owned. This seemed like a no-brainer. Allen would have to buy a newspaper for 25 cents once a week and would have to spend less than half an hour. That’s an hourly wage of $50. I don’t even need to do an inflation adjustment to tell you that that’s a high number. But I will anyway. It’s about $193 today. Per hour!
Towards the end of that year, one of Allen’s graduate student colleagues, who was a year ahead of Allen, told him that he shouldn’t expect the same deal the next year. This other student explained that he had had that deal the year before Allen, and it appeared that each year Tullock chose a promising student who badly needed the money and helped him out.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Nov 13 2019 at 8:42am
Things like that go a long way. When I was in financial straits in my 3rd year of grad school (having trouble even just paying rent), a professor helped me out in a huge way with a fellowship.
William Shughart
Nov 13 2019 at 10:46am
For anyone who knew Gordon, “The Charity of the Charitable” might have been a slightly better title.
David Seltzer
Nov 13 2019 at 5:28pm
Lovely story.
Don Boudreaux
Nov 16 2019 at 9:50pm
I miss Gordon. Few economists are so under-appreciated as is he, both as an economist and as a person.
David Henderson
Nov 17 2019 at 11:40am
Thanks, Jon, William, David, and Don.
William, great comment. For those of you don’t follow it, Gordon wrote in an insightful piece titled “The Charity of the Uncharitable.” He gave it at the University of Western Ontario in October 1971 when I was an undergrad there and I’ve written about it elsewhere.
To Jon: Gordon’s example is even better than yours because he paid it out of his own pocket.
Jon Murphy
Nov 17 2019 at 12:55pm
Oh absolutely. No denying that at all. I merely meant the point that when one is a struggling grad student (or struggling in general), knowing someone is looking out for you goes a very long way.
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