The Chicago Battler: Sherwin Rosen on George Stigler, Chicago and Economics

Abstract

The word feisty could have been coined to characterise Sherwin Rosen, a Chicago labour economist who won renowned for his work modelling employment, within some professions, as a type of ‘winner-take-all’ tournament. In many ways, that description is perhaps quite applicable to the Chicago department itself, where a fierce, if often friendly, competition raged among faculty members to skate along the cutting edge of research. In this conversation Rosen discusses life at Chicago and particularly the impact that an original thinker like George Stigler had in shaping the contours of the department during its seltzer days.