Money and Markets: Essays in Honor of Leland B. Yeager

30 William Breit, Kenneth Elzinga, and Thomas D. Willetttamper with the equipment; these were still the days when the telephone companyowned everything they placed in a customer’s home and the telephone had nomuting device.Yeager, never one to break rules, had a solution. He inquired as to whetheranything was stipulated regarding where the bell had to be located. The servicerepresentative informed him there were no such rules. Yeager directed that the bellfor his phone should be attached to the utility pole outside his house. Everyonecalling Yeager’s residence thereafter provided an externality to any birds perchedon the telephone lines nearby.We would be remiss if we failed to mention Yeager’s contributions to his departmentwhen he served as chairman from 1969 to 1972. As we have seen, Yeagerseemed able to bring off the unexpected. Some thought his shyness, his aversion tointerruptions, and his disdain for busywork would render him unsuccessful for therole of administrator. Here they would be wrong. His initial term as chairman wasso much appreciated by his colleagues that he was asked to continue.What made him so popular was the unobtrusiveness with which he went aboutthese duties. He applied the golden rule to chairing a department: treating his colleaguesas he would have wanted to be treated. This meant that few questionnairesfrom higher levels of the administration came their way, Yeager having disposed ofthem himself. It meant a minimum of departmental meetings or notices requiring aresponse. In short, Yeager smoothed the way for his colleagues to get their work done.Yeager as polymath linguistLeland Yeager was omnilingual. But he rarely spoke of his skills in foreignlanguages. Indeed, he took it for granted that everyone in the academy would beversatile in and knowledgeable about other tongues. His colleagues and studentslearned about Yeager’s remarkable achievements in this area not because Yeagervolunteered such information or through displays of one-upmanship. For somecolleagues, the revelation came through a visit to Yeager’s home, where a casualbrowse through his bookcases revealed volumes printed in an astonishing array oflanguages. For students, the news came through the University’s grapevine ordirectly through an encounter with him.Foreign languages were much more a subject of interest in an economics programduring Yeager’s years at the University of Virginia than they would be today.At one time, a reading knowledge of two foreign languages was required forcompletion of the doctorate. Later this requirement was relaxed to only one.Today, none would be required.Yeager would have found any language requirement an easy hurdle. During histime on the Virginia faculty, he was reputed to know more languages than anyoneelse. The precise number is difficult to verify. However, the officials who administeredthe exams relied upon Yeager’s skills in those linguistic areas where no onein the various language departments felt fluent.Those students who found themselves being examined by Yeager soon realizedthat this economics professor was no cinch. On one occasion a foreign student