Former BU Ec Chair Leaves Tenure, Visits Harvard

If faculty had to go through the Harvard admissions process, Visiting Professor of Economics Jeffrey A. Miron would be the high school senior who eschewed safety schools to put all his eggs in Harvard’s basket.

A former chair of the economics department at Boston University (BU), Miron resigned from his tenured position across the Charles to take a non-tenured visiting professorship on this side of the river—with no guarantee of a permanent post.

“It is unusual, possibly foolhardy,” Miron says of his decision.

But student reviews—listed in the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) Guide—suggest Miron’s decision was a good one.

Originally here last year as a one-year visitor, Miron is now in the first year of a unique five-year contract.

According to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Faculty Handbook, “The title of ‘Visiting’ is used only for those temporary appointees who hold a continuing position elsewhere.” But Miron no longer has a permanent position outside of Harvard, and when his five years are up, he could face unemployment.

Despite an uncertain future in the job market, the professor of a discipline devoted to making sense of the market is willing to face its vagaries.

“I am completely thrilled with my situation,” Miron says. “I accepted it knowing exactly what I was doing, and it’s totally my responsibility to accept the consequences if I end up unemployed in five years.”

Miron may not be a permanent resident of Harvard’s economics department, but for now Littauer is home.

“We are really happy to have him,” says department chairman Alberto F. Alesina. “I think he’s doing a phenomenal job.”

As an economist interested in cost-benefit analyses of government policies and their effects on society, Miron advocates drug legalization and other libertarian policies, saying that “however well intentioned, a large fraction of government interventions do more harm than good.”

He taught the popular fall course Economics 1017, “A Libertarian Perspective on Economics and Social Policy,” and is teaching Economics 1471, “Economics of Crime,” and a research seminar this semester.

‘A NICE SYNERGY’

Miron knew Harvard was the place for him when he first taught Economics 1017, which drew 127 undergraduates last year.

“If I could point to one thing, it was the reaction I received to the libertarianism class in the fall,” says Miron, who earned a whopping 4.8 in the CUE Guide for his Harvard debut. “It got me thinking, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to do this on a regular basis.’”

The decision to go on leave from BU landed Miron in the right place at the right time.

“The match with researchers at Harvard was better for me right now,” he says. “Courses they were interested in having me teach were much more akin to my research interests, a nice synergy.”

Harvard’s shorter semester means less teaching time, but Miron says teaching at Harvard is more interesting than at BU, where tighter resources meant the economics department had to “stick to the nuts and bolts of having faculty teach macro and micro.”

“The fact that I get to teach courses that mesh with my research interests makes life very pleasant,” says Miron, whose current interests include libertarian economics, crime, recycling, global warming, and terrorism. “You don’t have this tension of ‘should I focus on research or teaching’—the two are almost one and the same.”

A STUDENTS’ MAN

At Harvard, Miron’s students share the sense that their professor is invested in their learning.

“He’s not just regurgitating knowledge,” says Brandon L. Chiu ‘06. “His main goal isn’t to do well as a professor, it’s for his students to do well.”

One student liked Miron so much that the professor has become a fixture on his study card.

“He has a penchant for explaining things very well, also for throwing in humor and interesting examples,” says Alexander N. Harris ‘08, who took Economics 1017, is currently enrolled in Economics 1471, and also asked Miron to sponsor the Harvard Libertarian Forum, of which Harris is the president.

And Miron’s rapport with his students extends beyond the lecture hall.

Starting last semester, Miron scheduled weekly lunches with students. The gatherings, which usually attracted about five to ten attendees, were a chance for students to converse in a smaller group setting with Miron, whose Economics 1017 enrollment figures increased to 226 this fall.

“Compared to other professors I’ve had who distance themselves from students, Miron makes a conscious effort to get to know the students,” Chiu says.

BUSINESS A LA BAGELS

Miron’s move between institutions is reminiscent of an earlier move between departments.

As a freshman at Swarthmore College, Miron was a French major on his way to law school. All it took for Miron to switch majors during sophomore year was an economics class that fulfilled a distribution requirement, and he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics in 1979.

“I was a nerd,” Miron confesses. “I studied all the time.”

And as Miron studied the market forces of supply and demand, he profited from their relationship.

During his final two and a half years at Swarthmore, Miron operated a nightly bagel business that delivered sliced and cream-cheesed bagels to Swarthmore dorms at 10:30 p.m., assuaging students’ late-night hunger.

Miron was in charge of hiring, firing, bookkeeping, and ordering cream cheese and 25 dozen bagels daily, overseeing a successful culinary corporation that raked in weekly earnings of “a couple hundred dollars.”

Miron, who would later cast aside entrepreneurship for theory, has perhaps always been economically-minded. The son of a lawyer who thought like an economist, Miron says he and his father discussed economic policy at the dinner table.

“I got into a big fight with a classmate in junior high school trying to say gas lines in the 70s were due to price controls instead of evil oil companies,” Miron recalls.

After receiving a Ph.D in Economics in 1984 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Miron worked for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Drug Use and the Workplace, and the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research.

RALLYING FOR LARRY

Sitting in front of a laptop in his Littauer office last Tuesday, his finger occasionally perched over the mouse, Miron waited for the resignation e-mail from fellow MIT alum University President Lawrence H. Summers, who was one of Miron’s dissertation advisers.

“He really cared about his students, and he might forget to show up to an appointment, but once you actually met him, he could give you better advice about a paper you were writing in an hour than ten other economists could in a whole day,” Miron says. “He thought so clearly and interestingly about what was the heart of the matter.”

Miron’s own economic interests were shaped by Summers, who is remembered by his advisee as harboring a love for debating.

“Larry focused on...real understanding as opposed to high-tech flashiness,” Miron says, echoing the praise his own students have for him.

As someone who has recently found an academic home he enjoys, Miron says he sympathizes with his friend’s situation.

“Maybe he wasn’t in the ideal job,” Miron says. “Most of the time when he was inadvertently upsetting people, he was just being curious, trying to understand an issue by taking the other side.”

CLASSROOM COMFORT

While his former adviser is at a crossroads, Miron says he is not ready to talk about his own future career decisions.

He says there is “no particular need or reason to talk about it.”

A product and input of knowledge at three Boston institutions, Miron says even if he leaves Harvard, he could very well continue teaching and researching at other Boston-area schools.

Miron could also follow a path many of his students have already tread into investment banking or consulting.

But Miron remains most at home in the classroom, and says banking and consulting are “certainly not my first choice.”

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.