The other day, Andrew Postlewaite remarked that it is very hard to find a PhD economist whose academic ancestor thrice removed, was not a mathematician. Put differently, which PhD economists can trace their lineage back to Marshal, Keynes and perhaps even the Scottish master himself? An obvious problem is that it is unclear what it means for so&so to be one’s academic father. A strict definition might be thesis advisor. However, the PhD degree as we know it (some combination of study and research apprenticeship) is a relatively new thing. Arguably, the first modern PhD was granted by Yale in the early 1900s. Doctorate degrees were available in Germany prior to that. However, that degree was awarded upon submission of a body of work. There was no formal apprenticeship requirement. The UK did not introduce a doctorate degree until the early 1900s and that mimicked the German degree (and was introduced, apparently, to compete for US students who were flocking to Germany).
So, lets start at Yale with Irving Fisher. A celebrated economist, and justly so, at an institution that was the first to hand out PhD degrees. Fisher himself was a student of Josiah Willard Gibbs (mathematician and physicist, and, if you believe the mathematical genealogy project, descended from Poisson). What about Fisher’s descendants? Not a single of one of the laudatory pieces on Fisher here mention his students. Some digging uncovered James Harvey Rogers, who went on to become Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale and a panjandrum in the treasury. The university maintains an archive of his papers . Rogers also studied with Pareto. Rogers begat Walt Whitman Rostow. Rostow begat Everett Clyde Upshaw and that is where the line ends.
Lets try one more, Richard T. Ely, after whom the AEA has named one of its lecture series and credited as a founder of land economics. The Kirkus review of 1938 warmly endorses his biography, `The Ground Under our Feet.’ Ely begat John R. Commons, W. A. Scott and E. A. Ross. Commons begat Edwin Witte, the father of social security. Wikipedia credits Commons with influencing Gunnar Myrdal, Oliver Williamson and Herbert Simon, but `influencing’ is not the same as thesis advisor. But, this line seems promising, however other duties intrude.
5 comments
March 5, 2014 at 3:24 pm
afinetheorem
I don’t know how frequently he advised students, but Samuelson’s PhD adviser was Schumpeter, and Schumpeter’s “unofficially” did his doctorate under Bohm-Bawerk, so any of Samuelson’s students would count.
March 5, 2014 at 3:43 pm
rvohra
Hi Kevin
Arguable. Some sources list Leontief as Samuelson’s advisor. Leontief wrote his dissertation under Werner Sombart, a sociologist, I think. Now Samuelson has a contemporary at Chicago, Lloyd Meltzler of the paradox, (wiki answers incorrectly lists him as Samuelson’s advisor) who produced Harbeger (of triangle fame). Wikipedia lists Harbeger’s students as Chow, Lucas, Grilichies and Nerlove and we are really off to the races.
rakesh
March 5, 2014 at 5:01 pm
afinetheorem
Meltzler is a good example. The Leontief/Schumpeter divide is more semantics than anything else – Samuelson was at HSF before he wrote his dissertation, and was already a very famous economist. Indeed, he has an essay where he notes that others at HSF with him, among them Quine and Birkhoff(!),didn’t even find it necessary to actually write a PhD. Both Leontief and Schumpeter were on the committee, though (they are the two economists in the famous “Do you think we passed?” story following Samuelson’s defense.)
March 10, 2014 at 6:12 pm
Somewhere else, part 118 | Freakonometrics
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March 17, 2014 at 8:03 am
Luca
let’s start another Leontief chain: Leontief to Solow to Akerlof to…