{"id":395,"date":"2020-05-31T04:41:44","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T04:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/?p=395"},"modified":"2020-05-31T04:43:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T04:43:29","slug":"alberto-alesina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/alberto-alesina\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberto Alesina"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> Notes from his memorial service on Saturday, May 30. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My only task was to read him his email once a day.&#8221;RA. <\/p>\n<p>Shleifer.  Alesina didn&#8217;t care about he theory, or the statistics&#8211; he cared about the truth. Note: thsi si contrary to the idea that we are too mathy in economics these days. He ws good as chair at rejejecting requests for endless reports. (Ask how!)<\/p>\n<p>Jeremy Stein:   He was  the only member of our faculty who would squeeze my shoulder or touch my hand&#8230;. He was stuck because of bad weather on a glacier for 3 weeks near Mt. Blanc at 13,000 feet till  the helicoter could land. &#8220;I finished 3 papers&#8221;, he said. <\/p>\n<p>Someone: He cared more for stuents than anyone but Rudi Dornbusch. <\/p>\n<p>Barro: I miss Gary Becker every day. Alberto will be like that. <\/p>\n<p>Susan Alesina: &#8220;In  few months, Alberto and I would  have been married for twenty years.&#8221;  He died in her arms.  Hike on Sunday. He sent 15 emails in 10 minutes to Prof. Stantcheva. We&#8217;ll talk more on Monday, he said. &#8220;That Monday will not come.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Big Picture economics has lost its guiding light.&#8221; Romain Wacziarg, UCLA<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This column was written in a rush and under stressful conditions. We apologise for omissions and errors. In the spirit of Alberto\u2019s drafts and emails, this column may have typos.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> https:\/\/voxeu.org\/article\/alberto-alesina-free-spirited-economist<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;he was famous for his typos&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;When you are done with  the final draft,  I&#8217;ll add some typos.&#8221;   Stefanie Stantcheva&#8211; can you translate this email from Alberto&#8221; (so many typos) <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In his research, and in emails that were notoriously riddled with typos, <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>https:\/\/www.economist.com\/finance-and-economics\/2020\/05\/28\/the-legacy-of-alberto-alesina<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Adorava os e-mails com typos, o \u201cdon\u2019t screw up\u201d com bom humor, e tantas outras coisas que o faziam t\u00e3o \u00fanico al\u00e9m de seu legado acad\u00eamico. Vai fazer muita falta.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"pt\" dir=\"ltr\">Muito bonito, Felipe. Obrigada por compartilhar. Adorava os e-mails com typos, o \u201cdon\u2019t screw up\u201d com bom humor, e tantas outras coisas que o faziam t\u00e3o \u00fanico al\u00e9m de seu legado acad\u00eamico. Vai fazer muita falta.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Joana Naritomi (@joana_naritomi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joana_naritomi\/status\/1264609816191873032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 24, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>  Susan:  To his Studetns: I am always ready to support and encourage you. He was going to climb Mt. McKinley this year with Romain. He estimated he had 10 more years for mountaineering, and he didn&#8217;t like it that covid-19 was taking away 10% of his time. <\/p>\n<p>Hiking north of BOston. As we enard the end of the trail, we stopped for a moment. He suddenly collapsed and died in Susan&#8217;s arms. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8230;how he would grab your arm in excitement at some thought or story; how he would ruffle his own hair, eyes closed, as he thought about an idea you were asking him about; the emails filled with so many typos (so many more important things to think about than correcting damn typos!);the warmth with which he received the wife of a mere second- year PhD student, as she had just arrived in this new country. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/vv4q70rom9p2f4h\/Alesina%20RIP.pdf?dl=0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I still remember when I was sitting in his office \u2013 I was his research assistant at the time \u2013 and as we were discussing a project, his assistant came in with his mail. It makes me feel very old, but one of the letters wa one of the letters was from the American Economic Review, on a submission of his. He glanced at it, and said something to the effect of \u201cScrew them, I will send it somewhere else.\u201d<br \/>\n  I said, \u201cIt got rejected?\u201d<br \/>\n  And him, matter-of-factly,\u201c No, but they want us to split the paper, and this doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d<br \/>\n    I remember thinking to myself that I wished someday I would be in a position where the AER would accept my paper and I would say &#8220;no, thanks, you\u2019re asking me to make my paper worse&#8230;&#8221; For the record, I don\u2019t know that he actually followed through on that reaction, but the lesson was indelibly etched onto my mind: that\u2019s why we do what we do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/vv4q70rom9p2f4h\/Alesina%20RIP.pdf?dl=0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notes from his memorial service on Saturday, May 30. &#8220;My only task was to read him his email once a day.&#8221;RA. Shleifer. Alesina didn&#8217;t care about he theory, or the statistics&#8211; he cared about the truth. Note: thsi si contrary to the idea that we are too mathy in economics these days. He ws good [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,29,27,81,70],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-economics","tag-economists","tag-teaching","tag-typos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}