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Issue no. 193 April 2021 www.res.org.uk | @RoyalEconSoc A Farewell Letter from America Sir Angus Deaton writes to us one last time CONTENTS Inside this issue… APRIL 2021 | ISSUE NO. 193 major shocks to economic activity leave long shadows see page 12 01 THE EDITORIAL 12 THE COVID-19 RECESSION 20 THE WOMEN’S COMMITTEE AND HEALTH Endings and new beginnings: a brief How concrete steps on recruitment introduction to the redesigned April James Banks, Heidi Karjalainen, and could improve the representation of 2021 issue, from the new editor Dame Carol Propper consider how women in economics the Covid-19 recession will influence future health 02 LETTER FROM… 21 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL The farewell Letter from America by An update on a year in the life of 15 AN UPDATE FROM THE Sir Angus Deaton, reflecting on past the Economic Journal, based on the ECONOMICS NETWORK Letters, and his life and times detailed report for 2020 Alvin Birdi and Caroline Elliott take stock on the pivot to 07 LETTER FROM… HIGHLIGHTS 22 OBITUARIES teaching online, and describe the Highlights from the Letters from ongoing response of the An obituary for Domenico Mario America, chosen by the editor, and Economics Network Nuti, prepared by Joseph Halevi an appreciation from Peter Howells and Peter Kriesler 18 COMMENT 10 PROFILE 23 NEWS A comment from Jan Toporowski, From Marshall to obesity, and other and a response from the original A selection of news items, including discoveries: a question-and-answer authors, Roger Backhouse and a new Joint Managing Editor for the profile of Dame Rachel Griffith James Forder Economic Journal @RoyalEconSoc | www.linkedin.com/company/royal-economic-society | www.youtube.com/user/RoyalEconomicSociety EDITORIAL 01 The editor: JONATHAN TEMPLE A guide to the April issue his is an issue of endings oline Elliott takes stock of online and new beginnings. Sir teaching and the response of the TAngus Deaton has contrib- Economics Network. For more uted a much-admired Letter from information on economics and the America every six months for pandemic, see the Covid-19 hub on twenty-five years, but has decided the RES website. that the one in this issue will be Another beginning will be obvi- his last. His farewell Letter is a ous: our new look. We hope you retrospective, longer than usual, like it. The issue would not have and reminds us of what we will been possible in this form without be missing. We also present some the unstinting help of the outgoing highlights from his past Letters. editor, Peter Howells, and the new My hope is that the latter feature designer, Phil McAllister. Many will be as much fun to read as it thanks to them both, and to Helen was to prepare, and I would like to Miller and Julia Randall-Edwards thank Angus for his illuminating for their advice and guidance. contributions over so many years. Finally, the previous issue The new beginnings include the included an excellent piece on the first in a series of profiles of lead- history of economic thought by ing economists, which will often Roger Backhouse and James Forder. feature economists connected to In this issue, Jan Toporowski the RES. We start with a Past RES responds. He draws on the work of Another beginning President, Dame Rachel Griffith. Gunnar Myrdal to argue that eco- will be obvious: our Elsewhere in the issue, you can nomics is often, or even always, pol- new look. We hope find an article by James Banks, itics in another guise. The original Heidi Karjalainen, and Dame Carol authors provide a measured reply. you like it Propper on the long-run effects of Some economists would have chosen the Covid-19 recession on health. to be less measured – but that is for A feature by Alvin Birdi and Car- each reader to decide. 02 LETTER FROM… Letter from America: ANGUS DEATON A Farewell Letter from America After twenty-five years of writing for theNewsletter , Sir Angus Deaton contributes his final Letter from America, in which he reflects on pastLetters , economics, and his life and times hen I was a Research the admirable Peter Howells, who who had built their own lives in Officer in the Department has been a model of punctuality, Chicago and New York. Wof Applied Economics in encouragement, and appreciation. More ominously, non-citizens Cambridge in the early 1970s, I The Letter helped me learn to have always been at risk in the US, was befriended by Thelma Liesner, write for a non-specialist audi- especially after 9/11, even before then Thelma Seward. When she ence, or at least a non-specialist the horrors of Trump. Under the became Editor of the Newsletter audience of economists, a half-way Patriot Act of 2001 (“Inequality in 1995, and after I had moved house that is much easier than in America”, April 2002), univer- to Princeton, she remembered writing for newspapers. It allowed sities were commanded to hand me and, because she was a fan of me to write about things that over personnel files of non-citizens Alistair Cooke’s Letter from Amer- interested me but didn’t always on demand, and prohibited from ica on BBC Radio 4, she suggested I know much about, and I am grate- divulging that they had done so. In might write a Letter about economic ful for my readers’ forbearance. my own case, I (think I) suffered events in America. She suggested Writing the Letter has rarely felt nothing worse than the boorish the budget, which I never did like work, more often joy. Many attentions of an immigration officer, write about, if only because, unlike have been kind enough to say nice who took a dislike to me, tore up Britain where the contents of the things over the years, and it seems my green card, and turned my life budget become law, the American that many readers know of me into a bureaucratic hell that lasted “budget” is a fantasy wish list that only through the Newsletter. for more than a year. As President the White House sends to Congress I moved to Princeton from Bris- Obama writes in his autobiog- each year. But I did find other tol in 1983. I have never given up raphy, immigrants “are always things to write about—this is my my British citizenship, and did not afraid that the life you’d worked so 50th letter—and found an ideal become an American citizen until hard to build might be upended in outlet in the Newsletter, always 2012, in part because, until Obama an instant.” Even after that near attractively produced, relatively became president, I was less than upending, I was deterred from short, and with news, professional enthusiastic about swearing alle- applying by the impossible require- information, and obituaries. I was giance to the United States and ment that I document every trip always pleased when it landed on its leadership. But as the years abroad for the last 30 years, until my desk and always looked at it, passed, it seemed perverse not to I eventually realized that, for the and others appeared to do so too. acknowledge that my home was earlier trips, their records were no Thelma retired in 1997, and here, not to mention the homes better than mine. And Anne found since then I have worked with of my children and grandchildren my old passports in the basement. LETTER FROM… 03 Once I decided to apply for the Delaware?) As a final hurdle, citizenship, the lights turned on, with no chance to prepare, on the and the agency that I’d seen as a day of the ceremony, I was asked at Writing the Letter has persecutor became my friend. The the door whether, in the two weeks rarely felt like work, bureaucracy could not have been since I had passed the test, I had more often joy more helpful—votes matter—and I worked as a prostitute. My late col- even qualified for a special old-age league, Uwe Reinhardt, claimed to dispensation that allowed me to have answered “I have long looked answer correctly only 12 out of 20 for something in that line of work, possible questions (instead of 60 but so far without success.” At the out of 100), many of which had the ceremony, the immigration official same answer. (What is the capi- who welcomed the new Americans tal of America? Who was the first began by telling us that voting president? Who famously crossed was not an important part of citi- 04 LETTER FROM… zenship, something that I already knew to be false. I resisted the urge to raise my hand. That I long did not become American reflected real ambiva- lence, admiring many aspects of American life while watching oth- ers with fascinated horror. Both reactions are well represented in the Letters. I frequently wrote about the immense prosperity of American institutions like Prince- ton, how their riches were put at the service of scholarship, but how wealthy universities, faced with (relative) adversity after the finan- cial crisis, acted to protect their endowments, rather than using them to ride out the crash (“Moon over Texas,” October 2010). I wrote Anne Case and Angus Deaton (image: Rebecca Wilcox, about some of the best of Amer- Purdue University) ican economics, how immensely distinguished scholars—and oth- few journals, several not under hard to tell what subjects they ers—served changing administra- professional control, gives great cover, or whether economics has a tions in Washington (“News for leeway to strong-minded and recognizable core.