quarta-feira, setembro 15, 2004
Aaron Director (1901-2004)
Obituário no Whasigton Post.
Aaron Director, 102, the celebrated free-market economist who helped unite the fields of law and economics and mentored several generations of scholars, died Sept. 11 at his home in Los Altos Hills, Calif. (...)
Mr. Director, who published sparingly, was perhaps best known for his influence on his students and colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School, including the jurists Robert H. Bork and Richard A. Posner. He also founded in 1958 the Journal of Law & Economics, which he co-edited with Nobel laureate Ronald H. Coase.
After a restless and often radically leftist youth, Mr. Director joined the Chicago law faculty in 1946. He became part of a clique known as the "Chicago School" of economists, which included Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, his brother-in-law. The Chicago School reached a peak of influence during the Reagan administration.
In analyzing antitrust law -- his specialty -- Mr. Director took a grim view of government control and blessed market forces. He wrote that New Deal policies harmed consumers more than helped them and spent his career trying to explain perceived monopolies from a corporation's perspective.
(...)
Although his writing output was slim, it was significant. He wrote a review of Friedrich A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," which had a British publisher but had been turned down for publication in America. Mr. Director urged the University of Chicago to publish what would become a landmark paean to free markets by a future Nobel laureate. The book sold more than 200,000 copies and precipitated Mr. Director's own long-held wish to join the faculty at his alma mater.
Along with his friend Chicago economist Henry Simons, he became a key and early proponent of bringing economic thought to legal questions, particularly antitrust matters.
At a panel discussion at the University of Chicago in 1950, he argued a stringently pro-business line to reduce taxes on large corporations and eliminate tariff protections.
"There is room neither for subsidies to individual economic activities or for price fixing of particular products," he said. "Monopolistic determination of wages is in no sense different from monopolistic fixing of enterprises. If they are not to be trusted with governing industry, neither are unions."
In a published item, he also noted that intellectuals, who were opposed to free markets in goods and services, advocated a free market of ideas. He reasoned that libertarians on free speech issues should also foster the free market.
posted by Miguel Noronha 9:12 da manhã
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