William J. Baumol is a key source in my book project on Innovation Unbound. I had hoped he would be able to read, and comment on, the current draft, but that is not to be. He was one of the heroes of the economics of entrepreneurship.
(p. A13) The disease that bears William J. Baumol’s name is not what led to his death on May 4 [2017] at age 95, but it is what cemented his legacy as one of the pre-eminent economists of the 20th century.
. . .
Professor Baumol was “one of the great economists of his generation,” Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, said in an interview, adding, “The series of insights he had about managerial economics, the role of innovation — a whole series of innovational breakthroughs over a long period of time — had a profound effect on economics.”
. . .
“Nobody ever explained to him the difference between work and play,” Daniel Baumol said of his father. “During a long trip, he would sit in the back of the car, oblivious to the world, and as we pulled in, he would announce, ‘I just finished that article.'”
Patrick Bolton, a professor of economics at Columbia, described Professor Baumol as “someone who could come to a big problem and bring an extremely simple analysis that really shaped the way people would think about it.”
For the full obituary, see:
PATRICIA COHEN. “William J. Baumol, 95, Leading Thinker in Economics.” The New York Times (Fri., May 12, 2017): B14.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date May 10, 2017 and has the title “William J. Baumol, 95, ‘One of the Great Economists of His Generation,’ Dies.”)
My favorite Baumol paper, is:
Baumol, William J. “Education for Innovation: Entrepreneurial Breakthroughs Versus Corporate Incremental Improvements.” In Innovation Policy and the Economy, edited by Adam B. Jaffe, Josh Lerner and Scott Stern. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 33-56.