I was so pleased to learn of my AEI colleague Ed Glaeser’s election to the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard and a scholar at AEI, is one of the world’s leading economists, having made seminal contributions to our understanding of economic growth and law and economics. Ed’s most important work has been in urban economics, helping economists and policymakers to understand the economics of cities.
The New York Times review of his 2012 book, Triumph of the City, nicely captures Ed’s work:
Glaeser’s essential contention is that “cities magnify humanity’s strengths.” They spur innovation by facilitating face-to-face interaction, they attract talent and sharpen it through competition, they encourage entrepreneurship, and they allow for social and economic mobility. Glaeser takes us on a world tour of urban economics, collecting passport stamps in Athens, London, Tokyo, Bangalore, Kinshasa, Houston, Boston, Singapore and Vancouver. Along the way, he explains how urban density contributed to the birth of restaurants, why supermarket check-out clerks demonstrate the competitive advantage such density confers and how the birth of Def Jam Records illustrates the way cities spur artistic innovation. Here, his enthusiasm for cities is refreshing.
Glaeser’s got some tough words for poorly reasoned public policies that feed suburban living: federal highway programs, the mortgage tax deduction, low gas prices. While he understands the lure of big houses and lush lawns, he’s against subsidizing them. And he chastises city planners in Paris and Mumbai, making a passionate argument for building up — and up and up.
Ed’s election is a substantial professional achievement. According to the NAS:
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Approximately 500 current and deceased members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research.
Given his deep research on real-world economic issues, I have always been impressed that Ed teaches microeconomic theory to PhD students at Harvard. This combination speaks to Ed’s intellectual breadth. Similarly, there are not many scholars who can breathe new life into an entire subfield of economics while also being an extremely effective writer about economic issues for non-specialists. Ed is a model scholar and public intellectual.
Ed is a wonderful colleague. I leave every conversation with Ed smarter than I entered it. I congratulate him on this distinguished honor.
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