A Fascination With Economics

Abstract

The study of economics in the context of an institutionalised vacuum of knowledge is a peculiar experience. You reach in all directions with no sense of discrimination. Good fortune may intervene on occasion and guide you to the inheritance left us by great thinkers. But such exposure is disturbing. It stirred an awareness that my doctoral dissertation, marking the ritual exercise assuring entry into the academic confrerie with the blessing of the University of Zürich, be immediately committed to oblivion. Still, I was more than ever fascinated by the spectacle of man and his problems in society. I also judged, with better intuition than reason, that economics could offer me the best avenue to satisfy my curiosity. But the intellectual wasteland characterising the social sciences at Swiss Universities compelled a crucial decision between adaptation or departure. The offer of a grant by the Rockefeller Foundation determined the outcome. Four months at Harvard University and one and a half years as a visitor at the (then) Cowles Commission for Research in Economics (University of Chicago) introduced me to the American scene.