I was a fan of Yoram Barzel many years before I met him. I knew him through
his work. When I went to the University of Washington I went with the intention
of working with him, though I had no idea how that would come about. After
only a week on campus I was shocked to find him standing at my door. He introduced
himself and asked if I would come to his office, he had a paper he wanted
my opinion on. I was shocked. As he explained the paper to me, all I could
think of
was "I'm standing in the great Yoram Barzel's office!" The only thing I
heard him say was "well, what do you think?" What did I think? I hadn't thought
about anything
except that I was standing in his office. I blurted out "I think the paper
is quite long," and immediately realized Homer Simpson could have come up
with
something better.
That began a great friendship with a wonderful mentor. Yoram was a kindred
spirit who looks at the world in just about the same wierd way I do. I've
never heard
him talk politics or the weather, everything was always pure economics.
Below is a great picture of Yoram, and below is the introduction I gave for
his presidential
address to the Western Economics Association.
INTRODUCTION
In thinking about what I should say to introduce Yoram Barzel, I couldn’t
help but think “what would Yoram’s thoughts be about Presidential introductions”
I’m sure he would say:
“No one remembers an introduction,
no one pays attention to an introduction,
everyone is just waiting for the real speaker to step up,
and besides it’s costly to prepare and listen to an introduction … so the
optimal thing to say is nothing.”
However, I could never do that, if only because it is too great a personal
pleasure to introduce my mentor and friend.
Although Yoram has been a friend and father figure to many of us, I’m not
going to focus on this aspect of his career today. Rather, I want to make
5 very brief points about his research achievements, which after all, are
the grounds for his appointment as President of the WEA.
1.Yoram has been a lifelong researcher. After completing his Phd at the
University of Chicago, Yoram published his first paper in Econometrica (that’s
right, Econometrica) in 1963. Last year, Cambridge University Press published
his book on the state. How many here think they’ll be publishing books with
Cambridge when they are 70? In between he published approximately 40 articles
and two other books. For 40 years Yoram has been crossing Lake Washington
to spend his time writing in his 4th floor office at Savory Hall, and at
70 he shows no sign of slowing down. His work ethic is a tremendous example
to us all, and stands in sharp contrast to the common custom of working hard
until tenure and then coasting or consulting until retirement.
2. Yoram has been versatile in research. Most probably know, although many
might not, that Yoram was hired at the UW as an econometrician. If you look
at Yoram’s work in the 1960s it is dominated by estimation of cost and production
functions. This work was all published in top journals. Yoram’s work began
to change with his 68 paper on innovation, and by 1974 with his publication
of rationing by waiting he had completely switched over to studying property
rights and transaction costs. What I find hard to imagine is that Yoram made
this switch in his early 40s. Again, at a time in life when most academics
slow down and start to do derivative work, Yoram changed gears and had his
biggest impact on the profession. Of course, this might also have resulted
from the boredom in estimating production functions.
3. Yoram has been extremely influential. There are many people in
our profession with more than 40 papers to their credit. Yet very few of
us have written papers that others care about. In contrast, some of Yoram’s
papers are the most cited in our discipline, and his ideas permeate much
of the writings of others. In particular his 68 paper on racing to innovate
and his 76 paper on taxation are frequently ranked in the top 20 cited papers
of all time. Other paper’s by Yoram are so important that they have defined
a literature. Here I’m thinking of his 77 paper on information costs and his
82 paper on measurement. When people talk about the ABC’s of Property Rights,
they might have Alchian and Coase in mind, but the B stands for Barzel. To
a lot of us the work of Yoram is the bedrock of this field.
4. Yoram was ahead of his time. Yoram’s idea that effort to capture
property rights can be dissipating and that efforts are made to minimize this
dissipation, is still not widely grasped. It is common now to talk of “multi-task
agency” problems, “multiple property right dimensions”; “property rights”,
“goods attributes” and often these ideas are referenced to other individuals,
but all of these ideas go back to the work of Yoram in the 70s and early
80s.
5. Yoram’s work in interesting. When I was an undergraduate student a professor
of mine caught me reading Yoram’s measurement cost paper in the library. Knowing
my interests at the time he said “Are you reading that paper because it has
“theory of the firm” in the title? “No” I responded, “I’m reading it because
it has “Yoram Barzel” in the author.
Personally, I find much of what gets done in economics quite boring, but
this can’t be said of Yoram … well ok, the paper on technology in steam power
is pretty boring, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. Part
of Yoram’s talent is to choose topics and examples that spark interest. In
measuring technical change he looked at the Indy 500, to examine labor markets
he looked at slavery, to understand measurement costs he taught us about DeBeers’
diamonds. However, the real genius of Yoram’s work is that he always comes
up with clever answers.
Many often comment or compare Yoram’s work with that of Steve Cheung’s.
In the 1970s at the University of Washington, these two, along with Doug
North and others, were the center of the universe for the study of property
rights and transaction costs. It strikes me that Cheung was excellent at
asking great questions: why sharecontracting, who sets the price in a price
taker market, and the like. But when it came to great answers to even mundane
questions, Yoram was king. Yoram could take an observation like “sometimes
apples come in brown bags and other times they come in clear plastic ones,”
and could come up with an answer that also explained every thing from vertical
integration to price discrimination.
Finally, I guess I can’t introduce Yoram without saying that he is
one of the most gentle and nice people in the profession. I’m so glad that
he was honored with the presidency because he deserved it for so many reasons.
And with that it is now my pleasure to introduce to you, our speaker for today,
… Professor Yoram Barzel.