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

38 James M. Buchananeccentric along many dimensions; and he and I, in our work in politics, weredeparting a bit from the strictly classical foundations that Warren Nutter held dearto heart and mind. But Nutter accepted my arguments; he could scarcely deny thatTullock represented precisely the critical and imaginative qualities that we soughtin colleagues. Leland Yeager’s strong support for appointing Tullock to the facultyshould be mentioned here. With the addition of Gordon Tullock to a facultyposition, the basic construction was complete. The program, both for the JamesWilson Department of Economics and the Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies inPolitical Economy and Social Philosophy, was alive and well.Dividends were not slow in coming. With some fellowship support from theinitial Volker grant and some additional support from other foundations, notablyEarhart and Relm, graduate students of high potential began to be attracted to theprogram. Exciting research commenced to appear; “political economy,” broadlydefined, seemed to experience a genuine rebirth in those heady years in Charlottesville.Later appointments filled in the gaps, and William Breit, Harold Hochman,and Roger Sherman added to the excitement during the end-years of the criticaldecade.The program in operationSeveral elements were needed to put the sort of graduate-research program wewanted in operating order. First, solid instruction in price theory, aimed towardconveying a genuine understanding of the coordinating properties of marketstructures, was essential. Without this grounding, no program worthy of the name“economics” could exist. Second, a comprehensive and critical understanding ofthe post-Keynesian program in macroeconomics was a necessary part of anyprofessional qualifications. Third, basic mathematical competence was neededwhile, at the same time, we sought to insure against undue investment of scarcestudent resources in mathematization per se. Fourth, graduate students neededsome hands-on guidance into analytical writing that involved coherent constructionof arguments. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, graduate students neededdirection, counseling, and supervision in curriculum choices, timing of requirementsand threshold commitments, and in organizing themselves for the rigors of aresearch career. The anarchy that seemed to be so characteristic of many graduateprograms needed to be replaced with order.Warren Nutter assumed the direct and main responsibility for the first of theseelements. His true interest was always in what some called “old-fashioned” pricetheory, and he taught the students well. At the end of their first year, the Virginiagraduate students knew basic Marshallian economics, as amended and modernizedby George Stigler and Milton Friedman and as translated by Warren Nutter.Leland Yeager admirably fulfilled the second role in the Virginia program. Inmy still-held view, Yeager taught the best year-long course in macroeconomics inexistence during those noteworthy years. He guaranteed that the students wereexposed to, and that they learned, the whole range of ideas that then were includedunder the rubric “macroeconomics.” Using Don Patinkin’s book, Money, Interest,