Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Being There: An Intellectual Journey
- 2 Social Norms in Economics and in the Economics Profession
- 3 Personal Reflections on My Professional Life
- 4 Gray Eminence?
- 5 Biochemist to Economist
- 6 Puzzles and Paradoxes: A Life in Applied Economics
- 7 Succeeding in Economics
- 8 My Research Strategy
- 9 My Philosophy of Economics, Life, and Everything (Not!)
- 10 Finding a Niche
- 11 Become an Economist – See the World
- 12 Practitioner of the Dismal Science? Who, Me? Couldn’t Be!!
- 13 One Job, Four Careers
- 14 My Life and Research Strategy
- 15 How I Ended Up Being a Multifaceted Economist and the Mentors I Have Had
- 16 Searching for My Personal Philosophy
- 17 Learning about the Evolving International Economy
- 18 Confessions of a Wellesley FEM
- 19 God, Ants, and Thomas Bayes
- 20 The Path of a Monetary Economist
- 21 Learning from the Field
- 22 Order in and through Disorder: The Invisible Hand as a Turbulent Regulator
- 23 The Education of an Economist
- 24 Faith, Science, and Religion
- 25 My Studies in International Economics
- 26 Sailing into the Wind
- 27 My Life and Work Philosophy
- 28 Scaling Fortress Economics
- 29 The Accidental Economist
- Index
- References
29 - The Accidental Economist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Being There: An Intellectual Journey
- 2 Social Norms in Economics and in the Economics Profession
- 3 Personal Reflections on My Professional Life
- 4 Gray Eminence?
- 5 Biochemist to Economist
- 6 Puzzles and Paradoxes: A Life in Applied Economics
- 7 Succeeding in Economics
- 8 My Research Strategy
- 9 My Philosophy of Economics, Life, and Everything (Not!)
- 10 Finding a Niche
- 11 Become an Economist – See the World
- 12 Practitioner of the Dismal Science? Who, Me? Couldn’t Be!!
- 13 One Job, Four Careers
- 14 My Life and Research Strategy
- 15 How I Ended Up Being a Multifaceted Economist and the Mentors I Have Had
- 16 Searching for My Personal Philosophy
- 17 Learning about the Evolving International Economy
- 18 Confessions of a Wellesley FEM
- 19 God, Ants, and Thomas Bayes
- 20 The Path of a Monetary Economist
- 21 Learning from the Field
- 22 Order in and through Disorder: The Invisible Hand as a Turbulent Regulator
- 23 The Education of an Economist
- 24 Faith, Science, and Religion
- 25 My Studies in International Economics
- 26 Sailing into the Wind
- 27 My Life and Work Philosophy
- 28 Scaling Fortress Economics
- 29 The Accidental Economist
- Index
- References
Summary
I had a standard answer to the question with which adults love to torture adolescents: “What do you want to be/do when you grow up?” “I don’t know,” I would reply, “but I do know two things I won’t do: marry an academic or become one myself.” So what happened?
Early Imprints
Like most accounts of “how I came to be what I am,” mine begins with my parents and the environment, or environments – for they went their separate ways before I reached my third birthday – in which they immersed me. John von Neumann and his bride, Mariette, were both privileged, protected children of Budapest’s Jewish but fully assimilated haute bourgeoisie, born at a time when that city was a flourishing second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This golden age came to an abrupt end with the shock of the First World War and its aftermath: the breakup of the Empire, the 133 days of “Red Terror” brought on by a Communist coup and the declaration of the Soviet Hungarian Republic, and the creeping anti-Semitism that characterized the regime of Admiral Horthy, who led a successful counter-coup and was installed as head of state. He held that position until 1944, by which time my parents had re-created their lives in the new world across the Atlantic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eminent Economists IITheir Life and Work Philosophies, pp. 448 - 464Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014