First published: 27 July 2022 | https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12611
Dale W. Jorgenson passed away on June 8, 2022. Over his lifetime he was awarded many honors, but a listing of them cannot fully impart the magnitude of his impact on the profession, particularly those who are active participants in IARIW. As Martin Baily was quoted in the June 10th Wall Street obituary (Hagerty 2022), “He should have been awarded the Nobel prize in economics.”2
The article that perhaps could have earned him a Nobel, along with his research on the sources of economic growth (Jorgenson 1963), was written when he was only 30. This article, “Capital Theory and Investment Behavior,” was chosen as one of the 20 most outstanding papers published in the first 100 years of the American Economic Review. In 1963 he was promoted to the rank of full professor at the University of California at Berkeley, before he moved to Harvard in 1969, where 10 years earlier he had earned his doctorate. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association in 1971 in recognition of his accomplishments. This medal is awarded to the top economist under the age of 40; at that time it was awarded every 2 years. The medal citation notes his contributions to pure economic theory as well as statistical methods, noting how he married theory and practice in economics in his consideration of investment spending.3 He served as president of the American Economic Association and the Econometrics Society. Dale was a founding faculty member of the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment (“Harvard-China Project”), which began in 1993. He was named a university professor in 2002, an honor given to only the “crème de la crème” of Harvard professors. His interest in China extended beyond the Harvard-China Project topics, as he supported the human capital project of the China Center for Human Capital and Labor Market Research of the Central University of Finance and Economics, which uses Jorgenson-Fraumeni methodology to estimate human capital of China. He and Kenneth Arrow, the Nobel Prize winner, were distinguished speakers at the first release of the estimates in 2009. Dale created the World KLEMS initiative, which led to a series of conferences. The next in the sequence of seven will occur in Manchester England in 2022. This initiative supports the development and application of sectoral country data sets on output, inputs of capital (K), labor (L), energy (E), materials (M), and services (S) for individual industries.4,5, 4,5
Many less familiar with his efforts might not realize how important high-quality and complete data sets were to him, beyond KLEMS. He devoted significant amounts of time to creating an expanded set of national income accounts, initially with Christensen (Christensen and Jorgenson, 1969, 1970). Dale wanted to improve national accounts, with J. Steven Landefeld; then director of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), he published a blueprint for revision and extension of the U.S. national accounts (Jorgenson and Landefeld, 2006). His interest also extended to the international System of National Accounts (Jorgenson and Schreyer, 2013); subsequently he presented a paper at the 2015 IARIW-OECD SNA special conference, which was published in a special issue of the Review of Income and Wealth (Jorgenson and Schreyer, 2017).
Dale recently retired from teaching, but continued as a research professor. Among the last courses he taught were growth and crisis in the world economy, the rise of Asia and the world economy, and the impact of COVID-19 on the world economy. Both he and his courses were very popular.
Jorgenson′s influence on IARIW is through the many researchers who benefited from his research. The list is too long; however 58 of them participated in the festschrift book I edited, most of them IARIW members or contributors to the Review of Income and Wealth (Fraumeni, 2019). He was a member of IARIW, but he rarely attended IARIW conferences, although he was the Ruggles lecture speaker at the 2008 conference in Slovenia (Jorgenson, 2009).
On a personal note, what was it like to work with Dale Jorgenson? It is too simple to say career changing. Initially I was his only RA, so he personally taught me. Although I learned the basics from my coursework, my key understanding of economics came from him directly and indirectly from reading his publications. Ben Bernanke, the former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman, in his memoir, said that Dale “was brilliant.”6 Sometimes when we were discussing a subject throughout my 50 year interaction with him, his mind would go into hyper-drive, leaving me in the dust. I used to say that he specialized in everything, because he was so good at any topic he decided to investigate. I audited his graduate econometrics class, as he insisted. It was a class required of all Harvard doctoral students. Thankfully he gave out lecture notes, because he wrote so fast on the blackboard that only the brightest of the students had any chance of keeping up with him. Occasionally in those early years he would ask me to attend one of his public lectures to motion to him to slow down. It never worked because he never paused long enough to catch a breath or to look at the audience. I believe that Linda, his wife, got him to take a PowerPoint presentation class at some point; his public lectures went from hyper-speed to a normal, and engaging, speed. The first time he ever took me out to lunch (and it was at the Harvard Faculty Club), he asked me to work on the human capital project in the summer that the U.S. National Science Foundation had just funded. I had to tell him that although I had not planned to reveal it so soon, that I was undertaking my own human capital investment; I was expecting my second child. As I was walking out the door in late 1998 to start my position as chief economist at the BEA, I asked Dale to go out to lunch with me. This started a routine where we would go out to lunch a couple of times a year; the last scheduled for June 5th had to be cancelled as he was admitted to the hospital. We exchanged information at these lunches; this was a technique I had observed Dale using when he wanted information on the latest research on any topic. Returning to human capital, which Dale and I had collaborated on, happened because while at BEA I could not do research on productivity and my post-BEA topics were restricted by an edict from a government attorney about what type of research I could after I left BEA. Dale was very pleased to have that topic revitalized starting with an update of our early papers and particularly to have the World Bank adopt our methodology for their monetary measures of human capital.
And then there is Linda, his wife. Amazing woman and a fantastic supporter of everything Dale. Not long ago I told her that I could not sign my emails to both of them with hugs and kisses as she did in email responses to me, as he was an older male mentor. It is obvious that I remain eternally grateful to Dale for what he taught me.
I miss him very much.