Robert Ekelund
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Robert Burton Ekelund Jr. (September 20, 1940 – August 17, 2023) was an American economist.


Early life and education

Born on Galveston Island, Texas, Ekelund attended St. Mary's University in
San Antonio, Texas San Antonio ( ; Spanish for "Anthony of Padua, Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the List of Texas metropolitan areas, third-largest metropolitan area in Texa ...
, earning his BBA in
economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
in 1962 and his MA in economics and history the next year. He was a member of the Order of the Barons and first worked as an instructor in economics while completing his master's degree. Ekelund then moved to
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...
, to teach and continue his graduate work at
Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as Louisiana State University (LSU), is an American Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louis ...
. He finished his
PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in economics and political theory there in 1967. His doctoral dissertation was on Jules Dupuit, a French civil engineer and economist. Ekelund would maintain this interest in Dupuit, making him the topic of a dozen journal articles and a 1999 book, ''Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics: Dupuit and the Engineers''.


Career

In 1967, after the completion of his PhD, Ekelund was hired by
Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...
economics department, where he was Director of Graduate Students. He was made Professor of Economics in 1974. His students at Texas A&M included future Texas politicians Chet Edwards and
Rick Perry James Richard Perry (born March 4, 1950) is an American politician who served as the 14th United States secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019 in the first administration of Donald Trump. He previously served as the 47th governor of Texas fr ...
. In 1979, Ekelund moved to
Auburn, Alabama Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama. The population was 76,143 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is a principal city of the Auburn metropolitan area, Alabama, Aubu ...
to become a professor at
Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...
, where he was the first Director of Graduate Students in economics, for Auburn's new PhD program. Over the course of his academic career, he directed over 50 doctoral dissertations and dozens of master's theses. His students included Donald J. Boudreaux. Ekelund was a visiting scholar at the
Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and formerly The Hoover Institute and Library on War, Revolution, and Peace) is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic ...
at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, and in 2003 he served as the Vernon Taylor Distinguished Visiting Professor at Trinity University in
San Antonio, Texas San Antonio ( ; Spanish for "Anthony of Padua, Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the List of Texas metropolitan areas, third-largest metropolitan area in Texa ...
. Ekelund was also a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, an
Independent Institute The Independent Institute is an American libertarian think tank founded in 1986 by David J. Theroux and based in Oakland, California. The institute has more than 140 research fellows and is organized into seven centers addressing a range of pol ...
research fellow, and an adjunct faculty member of the
Mises Institute The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, that is a center for Austrian economics, right-wing libertarian thought and the paleolibertarian and ana ...
. Ekelund retired from Auburn University in 2003, becoming the Catherine and Edward Lowder Eminent Scholar Emeritus. Over the course of his career, Ekelund authored over two dozen books, and over 200 academic papers.


Significance in economics

Economic topics notably discussed by Ekelund include cultural economics, the
history of economic thought The history of economic thought is the study of the philosophies of the different thinkers and theories in the subjects that later became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day. This field encompasses many d ...
, the economics of regulation, the economics of religion,
public choice theory Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." Gordon Tullock, 9872008, "public choice," '' The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics''. . It includes the study of ...
,
mercantilism Mercantilism is a economic nationalism, nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy. It seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country and use those resources ...
, and the economics of the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
blockade A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are ...
s. Textbooks by Ekelund have sold successfully with his and Robert Tollison's basic book, "''Economics''" now in its seventh edition. The history of economic theory and its relevance to contemporary economic theory and policy was one of Ekelund's primary interests. His book with Robert Hebert, ''"A History of Economic Theory and Method"'' has entered its sixth edition and has been in continuous publication for five decades. The book illustrates how models can facilitate the analysis of economic theory as well as its interaction with both ancient and contemporary psychology, sociology, anthropology, and culture. This book, with various editions translated into five languages, remains a primary source in the development of modern economic theory. His interests in the economics of regulation were combined with Sir Edwin Chadwick's historical study in 2012. Chadwick's sophisticated 19th-century conceptions of moral hazard, common pool problems, asymmetric information, and theory of "competition for the field" of service (franchising) were pioneering concepts in contemporary theory but were only rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century. Ekelund along with E. O. Price chronicled these stark innovations in a recent book entitled The Economics of Edwin Chadwick: Incentives Matter. According to Professor Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago, "Economists owe a great debt to Ekelund and Price for making us aware of Edwin Chadwick's seminal contributions. Chadwick lived in the middle of the 19th century, but he anticipated many of the theoretical and practical advances that culminated in the law and economics revolution of the late 20th century. These include Coase's analysis of social cost and Demsetz's proposal for franchise bidding in natural monopolies. Read the summary of Chadwick's ideas about railroads and consider that Britain adopted many of them but only more than a century later. The book is full of similar examples where Chadwick's prescience is extraordinary. Economists, legal scholars and practitioners, especially those working at the intersection of law and economics, will want to read this book." Ekelund's 1981 book with Tollison, ''Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society'', is cited as an exemplar of the school of thought that argues that
mercantilism Mercantilism is a economic nationalism, nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy. It seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country and use those resources ...
, rather than being the result of miscalculation, was a system designed by rent-seekers to enforce public policy favorable towards themselves.


Dupuit and the French engineers

His 1999 collaboration with Hébert, ''Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics'', has been praised for publicizing the theoretical and applied achievements of Jules Dupuit and others whose work in economics was often previously overlooked as mere engineering literature. In his review, economist Marcel Boumans of the
University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...
asserts, "For too long they were neglected in the history of economics. Ekelund and Hebert's tribute to their work remedies this shortcoming." According to a July 1999 book review in the ''American Journal of Economics and Sociology'', According to Nicos Theocarakis of the University of Athens,


Economics of religion

Sacred Trust and The Marketplace of Christianity have both spawned debate among those interested in one of the latest new "fields" in economics—the economics of religion. Economist John Wells argues in his March 1998 Journal of Markets and Morality review of Sacred Trust that, In his Chronicle of Higher Education review of The Marketplace of Christianity, David Glenn notes that arguments in the book that Westerners have demanded "cheaper" religions over time are at odds with assertions by economist Laurence R. Iannaccone that "strict churches are strong." Barry R. Chiswick in his 2009 review of the book in the ''Journal of Economic Literature'', notes that Ekelund and his cohorts use income, education, the state of science and full price of alternative religious beliefs to predict the types of religions chosen. Factors affecting demand and risk profiles between mainline Protestant religions, on the one hand, and fundamentalist and traditionalist Roman Catholics, on the other relate Chiswick concludes that schisms are beneficial and that " ese ideas seem to be particularly relevant in the current period where religious fundamentalism and liberalism/individualism are clashing to various degrees in all the world's religions. The application of microeconomic theory that is so successfully applied here to one major development in Christianity can, in principle, be applied to these other religions as well." Building upon previous research Ekelund and Robert Tollison's "prequel" entitled Economic Origins of Roman Christianity draws upon the economics of networking, entrepreneurship, and industrial organization to explain Christianity's rapid ascent in the presence of Jewish and pagan competitors. The book introduces St. Paul as an entrepreneur, Constantine as a political strategist and the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs as players with the Roman papacy to enhance the church's power and dominance over much of Western Europe—culminating in a virtual monopoly during the high Middle Ages. According to Professor Rachel M. McCleary of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Economic Origins is "An engrossing and insightful account of the branding of early Christianity through entrepreneurship, networking, manipulation of civil governments, and the control of entry into the Roman religion market. This is a major contribution to the study of religion, giving us a fresh, analytical approach to early Christianity and how it became the powerful medieval church."


Cultural economics

The interface between culture and economics, including the study of specific markets and institutions relating to art and museums, caught the interest of economists, including Ekelund, decades ago. Economist David Throsby established "cultural economics" in the hierarchy of the American Economic Association's index of topics considered "economics" in 1994. Ekelund has been associated with such studies for several decades, conducting studies with colleagues in the late 20th and early 21st centuries using a small auction sample of Latin American art. Later, with colleagues and an acute interest in American art, he analyzed a database of 14,000 observations on 80 American artists born in the 19th and 20th centuries. A series of contributions was followed by a book, The Economics of American Art: Issues, Artists and Market Institutions, published in 2017. The book studies a number of critical issues including (a) how the market for American art developed historically from colonial times to the present; (b) how the age of an American artist is related to her productivity; (c) how returns to art investment in the pre-1950 and contemporary periods compare to other types of investments; (d) the economic underpinnings of art crime, such as theft and the creation of fakes; and (e) how the "bubble" observed in art markets is facilitated by the institutions through which art is marketed. David Throsby of Macquarie University comments that Kathryn Graddy of Brandeis University and editor of the Journal of Cultural Economics, argues that the authors' approach is Ekelund, in addition to his studies of art and economics, has also analyzed some of the economic factors affecting museums, including contemporary art bubbles and attendance related to the business cycle, and studied the effect of the hypothetical elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts on museums and the arts generally.


Fine arts

In addition to his work in economics, Ekelund was an artist, whose work was shown regularly in juried and other shows during the latter two decades of his life, with solo and joint exhibitions in Alabama. Ekelund also designed book covers for the University of Chicago Press and Edward Elgar Publishing in London. He was an avid art collector and curator whose collection has been exhibited in several museums. He was a founding member of the advisory board for the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in
Auburn, Alabama Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama. The population was 76,143 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is a principal city of the Auburn metropolitan area, Alabama, Aubu ...
and was the museum's acting co-director from 2006 to 2007 and chairman of the Advisory Board from 2010 to 2012. Ekelund was also an accomplished pianist, having been classically trained since childhood, and recorded five albums: ''Solace'' (also called ''For the Piano''); ''Reverie''; ''Bach, Beethoven, Brahms''; ''Musical Idioms''; and ''Reflections on Childhood'', which featured his performances of works by Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel, Grieg, Griffes, Scott Joplin, Turina, Granados, Gershwin, and others. He was a contestant in the 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2014 Van Cliburn Amateur Competition, and he created an homage to Chopin's 200th birthday. Many piano works, including his Van Cliburn entries, appear o
his YouTube channel


Personal life and death

Ekelund was a keen cook and gastronome, and was a partner in the award-winning Greenhouse Restaurant in Opelika, which operated from 1979 to 1993. He also enjoyed gardening, and was selected for the Auburn tour of beautiful yards. Robert Ekelund died on August 17, 2023, at the age of 82, after a years-long battle with Parkinson's disease, and later cancer. He was survived by his husband, Mark Thornton.


Books

;As author * ''A History of Economic Theory and Method'' with Robert F. Hébert. (available in Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Chinese, and Portuguese editions), McGraw-Hill, 1st edition, 1975. Sixth edition (Waveland Press, 2014, ). * ''Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society: Economic Regulation in Historical Perspective'' with Robert Tollison. Texas A&M University Press, 1981. * ''The Essentials of Money and Banking'' with Leonardo Auernheimer. John Wiley & Sons, 1982. * ''Macroeconomics'' with Charles DeLorme. Business Publications, 1983. * ''Economics: Private Markets and Public Choice'' with Robert Tollison. Little, Brown, and Company, 1986. (7th Edition. Addison-Wesley-Longman, 2006. ) * ''Advertising and the Market Process: A Modern Economic View'' with David Saurman. Pacific Institute, 1988. * ''A History of Economic Theory and Method'', with Robert F. Hébert, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990 * ''Intermediate Macroeconomics'' with Charles D. DeLorme and Dennis Jansen. West Educational Publishing, 1994. * ''Intermediate Microeconomics: Price Theory and Applications'' with Richard Ault. D. C. Heath, 1995. * ''Classics in Economic Thought'' with Robert F. Hébert. McGraw-Hill, 1996. * ''Politicized Economies: Monarchy, Monopoly, and Mercantilism'' with Robert Tollison. Texas A&M University Press, 1997. () * ''Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics: Dupuit and the Engineers'' with Robert F. Hébert. University of Chicago Press, March 1999. () * ''Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm'' with Robert F. Hébert, Robert Tollison, Gary Anderson, and Audrey Davidson. Oxford University Press, 2003. () * ''Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War'' with Mark Thornton. Scholarly Resource Books, 2004. () * ''The Persistence of Myth and Tragedy in Twentieth-Century Mexican Art'' with Catherine Walsh. Taylor Museum of Art, 2004. * ''The Marketplace of Christianity'' with Robert F. Hébert and Robert D. Tollison. (available in Italian) MIT Press, November 2006. () * ''Economic Origins of Roman Christianity'' with Robert D. Tollison. University of Chicago Press, 2011. () * ''The Economics of Edwin Chadwick'' with Edward. O. Price, III. Edward Elgar, 2012. () * ''The Economics of American Art: Issues, Artists and Market Institutions'' with John D. Jackson and Robert Tollison. Oxford University Press, 2017. () * '' The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate'' with
Phil Gramm William Philip Gramm (born July 8, 1942) is an American economist and politician who represented Texas in both chambers of United States Congress, Congress. Though he began his political career as a Democratic Party (United States), Democrat, Gr ...
and John Early. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2022. (ISBN 1538167387) ;As editor * ''The Evolution of Modern Demand Theory: A Collection of Essays'' with Eirik G. Furubotn and W. P. Gramm. D. C. Heath and Co., 1972 * ''The Foundations of Regulatory Economics'' in 3 volumes. Edward Elgar, 1988.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ekelund, Robert 1940 births 2023 deaths 21st-century American economists Economists from Texas Historians of economic thought St. Mary's University, Texas alumni Louisiana State University alumni Auburn University faculty Deaths from cancer in Alabama Deaths from Parkinson's disease in the United States