Honoring Edward Lazear
Edward Lazear was one of our economic heroes, an accomplished academic and public servant who made a profound, enduring impact at the Becker Friedman Institute, the University of Chicago, and our nation more broadly. He will be deeply missed by his colleagues and friends around the globe, and our thoughts are with his family during this challenging time.
Eddie was known as a champion of free-market competition and capitalism and a leader in the study of Price Theory. His book Personnel Economics, published in 1995, established a new field in labor economics, focused on human resource practices and incentives in organizations. He made important contributions as well in education, immigration, productivity, and entrepreneurship. As a student of Gary Becker, Eddie founded the Society of Labor Economists and later served as its president. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics, and also founded the working group on Personnel Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
At Stanford University, Eddie served as the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Davies Family Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
He also served as Chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009, where he played a key role in guiding the Administration’s response to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. He was known as a friend and confidant to President Bush, who gave him the nickname “Stork” during their frequent bike rides around Camp David.
Prior to joining Stanford, Eddie taught at the University of Chicago for twenty years, inspiring generations of students with his enthusiasm and innovative approach to teaching. During that time, he also began what would become a lifelong engagement in the Becker Friedman Institute, an investment of his own time, energy, and thinking that has shaped who we are to this day.
For BFI, Eddie was an intellectual successor to Gary Becker, first serving as the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Council, and then as a Distinguished Fellow, a highly prestigious group of scholars who play an active role in the Chicago Economics community. For many young scholars, Eddie will be remembered as a regular faculty member of the annual Price Theory Summer Camp, held each year to expose PhD students from outside of the Chicago Economics community to the study of Price Theory.
When Gary Becker passed away in May 2014, Eddie memorialized his many contributions in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. He noted, “…the world lost one of the great economists of the past century—and one of its most significant social scientists. Becker believed that economics could be used to explain all social behavior. He proved it by analyzing topics believed at the time to be beyond economic analysis. His work was so revolutionary that it was viewed as heretical when it first appeared in the late 1950s, but it was eventually recognized with the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992.”
As we remember Eddie Lazear, many of the same sentiments apply. We have lost one of the greatest scholars of our time. We acknowledge and admire Eddie’s enormous contributions to the economics profession, his intellectual leadership, and his tireless work as a public servant. On a personal note, we always left our interactions with him with a better understanding about the world and renewed by his infectious optimism and cheer. We will deeply miss him, as will so many others.
Eddie’s impact on BFI and the Chicago School of Economics has been substantial and will be ongoing for years and generations to come.
A brief collection of photos is included below highlighting his contributions to the Becker Friedman Institute.
Michael Greenstone and Erik Hurst
