Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Invisible Beard on Talk Like a Pirate Day

In honor of today's holiday I thought I would recognize one of my favorite economists who doesn't really get the recognition he deserves. Bart [pronounced BARRRT] "The Invisible Beard Smith" grew up on a MARRxist commune in the Caribbean. He soon rejected communist ideas and discovered a love of economics after finding a way to ARRRbitrage bottles of rum between his and the neighboring commune. He left the Caribbean to attend Beloit College in Wisconsin, which was a surprise to many given that it is landlocked and full of landlubbers. After founding the Beloit Students Against Scurvy organization he wrote his senior thesis on optimal currency unions in Latin America "ARRgentina, Brazil, and Chile and the pieces of eight currency union." After Beloit he was accepted to HARRvard's Ph.D program working under MARRtin Feldstein as an R!.A. at the NBERR! His work with Feldstein on social security reform proposed seniors take private accounts or walk the plank! His Job Market paper used "Autoregressive (AR!) estimations of shipping tonnage as a predictor of recession" made him a staRR on the market. His job market experience is quite the tale though. Smith visited both fresh and salt water institutions, his success led him to plunder all of the booty from one Big Ten institution, although he lost an eye after a duel with Tom SARRgent following his NYU seminar. Instead of accepting any offers he has for the last ten years commanded a vessel of economists sailing the seven seas and writing articles. He did return to Washington briefly to work with Glen HubbARRd on TARRP. He was the first economist to publish in all 5 AER journals, which they have titled in his honor an AERRRRR! He is currently a  co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics (R!-estat). Keep an eye out for him, I'm sure you'll see his work featured in MARRginal revolution or a write up by Megan McARRdle soon.

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