Table Of ContentGeorge Stigler
Enigmatic Price Theorist of
the Twentieth Century
Edited by Craig Freedman
George Stigler
Craig Freedman
Editor
George Stigler
Enigmatic Price Theorist
of the Twentieth Century
Editor
Craig Freedman
University of New South Wales
Sydney, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-56814-4 ISBN 978-1-137-56815-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56815-1
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Cover credit: Stigler papers, Regenstein Library Archives, University of Chicago. London 1947, on their
way to the first Mont Pelerin Society meeting, from left to right: Aaron Director, George Stigler and
Milton Friedman
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The Journey—A Reminiscence
Me Came to Chicago,
way back,’53
Worked for Tolley and Gale,
Gregg, Gary and Al
Then for Stigler, in years, 33
They said I was destined to fail
Stigler was, as you know, hard as nails
But under that shell, oh,
Beat a heart of red Jello
And I coasted through on his coat-tails!1
—Claire Friedland
1This previously unpublished poem is by George Stigler’s long time research assistant and indis-
pensable co-worker, Claire Friedland. As the poem points out, she spent 33 years working along-
side Stigler from the early days of his return to Chicago until his death (1958–1991). She writes,
“I was an RA in my student days for in order: George Tolley, D. Gale Johnson, H. Gregg Lewis,
Gary Becker and Arnold [Al] Harberger” (Correspondence with Claire Friedland, October 2017).
Claire Friedland has always proved to be a treasure trove of information, insight and inspiration
in my own search to understand the ever elusive George Stigler. The poem points out a surprising
Japanese contradiction in Stigler’s nature, namely the difference between his tatemae (the outside
appearance he displayed to the world) and his honne (the inside truth which generated an intense
loyalty from his circle of friends). My thanks and appreciation to Claire Friedland for granting
the rights to publish her thoughts.
To my daughters Emily and Nicola who neither know, or care to know,
who George Stigler might be.
Heart on a Sleeve
A student once asked me what was “beneath George Stigler’s hard, sarcas-
tic exterior.” How could I resist answering “A hard, sarcastic interior”? In
reality, it was a question I couldn’t answer at the time; it had been only
10 or 15 years that I’d been doing research for, and with, George. Today
I think I’d respond “Sarcastic? Well, yes. But hard? No, I don’t think so.”
Although I had often said that George was irrationally rational, in certain
areas he was irrationally generous. (Friedland 1993: 780)
Growing up as a single child in suburban Seattle, shy and certainly not
gregarious, George Stigler learned to keep his feelings close to his vest.
Instead, he seemingly uses his caustic wit to keep friends, colleagues,
students, and opponents at arm’s length, if not further. The heart that
beat under all that protective camouflage was hard to detect and cer-
tainly even the best researcher can only provide glimpses that attempt
to explain such a complex figure. A safer strategy, forming the bulk of
this volume, is to focus on his academic output which is certainly more
open to analysis. Still, George Stigler, as a man, remains an enticing
mystery. In some sense he is something of a contradiction, a shadowy
romantic outlaw. (Though in fiction, as opposed to everyday life, the
figure is almost a cliché.)
ix
x Heart on a Sleeve
One aspect of Stigler, the one more open to inspection, is his career
as an academic gunslinger. Not quite a gun for hire as much as a gun
in the service to a cause, the ideological right-handed quick-draw of
the marketplace. To opponents, perhaps it would not be too far off the
mark to regard him as a figure drawn directly from the classic western
Shane. Specifically the Jack Palance character, attired completely in black
and giving the evil eye to all the quivering and fearful sodbusters. As the
living manifestation of that cinematic creation, George Stigler appeared
to be almost programmed to mercilessly eliminate all opposition by
whatever available means might prove to be effective. Eradication, rather
than engagement, was both his strategy and objective.
But there is also a hidden Stigler, shown by an almost unacknowl-
edged generosity that imbues him with a deeply romantic heart.
Throughout his career he was also something of a Don Quixote fig-
ure in the best sense of that description. Someone who felt compelled
to defend the honour of the marketplace, seeing it as almost his duty
and obligation to embellish its institutional beauty and to ignore its
blemishes. Done not because of any intrinsic dishonesty, but to serve a
higher goal. Stigler is even akin to Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, creating him-
self seemingly out of thin air from his beginnings as a gauche provincial
boy. In neoclassical price theory he discovered his Daisy Buchanan, the
ideal for which he strove. He successfully created the world he wanted
so badly, seeming to capture for himself what had slipped so carelessly
through Jay Gatsby’s fingers. Something of that life as an academic and
romantic adventurer can be glimpsed in the cover photo in this volume.
In it George Stigler and his two co-conspirators (Milton Friedman and
Aaron Director) are caught at the start of an ascent that would change
the shape and face of economics. This picture, taken in 1947 right
before the first Mont Perlerin meeting, shows these three still young
men at the base camp of their careers, in some sense parallel to Edmund
Hillary before his achievement in scaling Mount Everest. There is a
wide-eyed determination in their vision as though ready for whatever
was to come, even though at that moment they had little conception of
where their attempt to refigure economics would eventually take them.
The journey George Stigler would ultimately complete would trans-
form him into an appropriate subject for detailed and almost forensic
Heart on a Sleeve xi
analyses. Future investigations must further delve into essential aspects
of his research, papers and speeches. This volume serves as something of
an introduction to unraveling the enigma of George Stigler.
Sydney, Australia Craig Freedman
February 2020
By Way of a Contradiction
But in any case I really feel that he is one of the most interesting and in
some sense, most enigmatic characters in our profession in this last cen-
tury. (Conversation with Arnold Harberger, August 1997)
Since any potential reader is faced in this case with a rather voluminous
edition, my perceived responsibility, at least as far as I can ascertain, is
to write something of a non-preface-preface. Or as that original thinker
Owl (resident of the 100 Acre Wood) sharply perceived, a response
that is more of a contradiction than either an introduction or definite
statement. Here I am relieved of a great deal of responsibility by know-
ing that only the obsessive or the hopelessly compulsive bother to pay
any serious attention to a preface no matter how it might be labeled.
Accordingly, I feel as though I have been granted free range to doo-
dle along a bit without needing to meet any subscribed objectives or
conventions.
In which case, let me confess that neither here, nor in what passes as
an introduction, will you find anything like a discussion of the individ-
ual contributions to this volume. My residual faith is that those opening
the book can read and judge for themselves. If not, if in fact anything
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