George Stigler’s Career Moves: The Roles of Contingency, Self-Interest, Ideology, and Intellectual Commitment (original) (raw)
2020
Abstract
George Stigler is commonly seen as one of the central figures in the Chicago School of Economics. However, he did not actually take a faculty position at the University of Chicago until the age of 47. This essay will provide a narrative account of George Stigler’s various career transitions from graduate school through his “retirement.” This narrative structure will be employed to bring out what archival material implies about a number of general themes regarding Stigler’s career. Particular attention will be devoted to the 1946 episode in which Chicago failed to make him an offer and the 1957–1958 episode in which W. Allen Wallis successfully induced him to take charge of the Walgreen Foundation and Walgreen Professorship. A first theme considered concerns the role of contingency in Stigler’s academic appointments. A second theme concerns the intellectual diversity of the academic milieus in which Stigler operated, which runs counter to the conventional view of a monolithic Chicago...
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