Bruce Gardner - Economics and Policy
I first met Bruce when I began my MSc program in agricultural economics at Texas A&M University in the fall of 1977. Bruce had just joined the faculty at A&M; indeed, he had just moved to College Station from Washington, D.C. where he had been with the President's Council of Economic Advisors. I enrolled in Bruce's agricultural policy class in my first term. For a new graduate student and someone just beginning the process of learning the profession, Bruce's course was a real eye-opener. What I remember most about the class was its underlying premise that economic tools and concepts could and should be used to evaluate policy. Some policy ideas were good and some were not so good; the way to separate them was through solid economic analysis. Solid economic analysis required a good knowledge of economic theory, a good understanding of the working of economic systems, and a framework for putting these together for examining policy. Bruce was a master at developing well thought out and relatively simple models to examine important policy issues, and I learned that this was the standard that was required if you wanted to be called an economist. My interest in policy issues has been influenced and shaped by many professors and colleagues over the years, and Bruce is among those at the core. He will be deeply missed.
I have been thinking about the role of economic analysis in policy formation and evaluation lately for other reasons. Because of a variety of factors, there appears to be renewed interest inside government for economic evaluation of policy. Evidence of this new interest can be found, for instance, in AAFC's decision a few years ago to fund a number of policy networks that focus on issues such as consumer behaviour, trade, farm structure and innovation. The KIS project can also be seen as an example of this interest.
Further evidence of this interest can be found in the topic for this year's annual workshop of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, organized by president-elect Lars Brink; the theme is the role of economics research in policy development. The workshop will be held October 24-25, 2008 in Ottawa. Confirmed speakers for the workshop include Dave Pannell (professor, University of Western Australia), Joanna Hewitt (former USDA Secretary), J.B. Penn (former USDA Under-Secretary), Alex McCalla (professor emeritus University of California, Davis and former World Bank Director), and Thomas Townsend (Policy Research Initiative). As further details become available, the KIS project will post them to our website's "Events" section. The KIS project will also be holding an event in Saskatoon earlier in October on a similar theme.
A few years ago I would have argued that the type of agricultural policy analysis developed and practiced so well by Bruce Gardner was in decline - graduate schools were no longer emphasizing this topic and governments seemed to have only a selected interest in it. Has something changed, if so, what? Are the issues of the day - such as the bioeconomy - ones that are new and have little or no knowledge built up around them? Or is the turnover in the civil service creating a demand for people with these skills? Or has the failure in the past to undertake ongoing policy analysis (perhaps relative to what has occurred in other countries) created a situation where this analysis is now needed? Discussion at the CAES workshop and other forums is needed to shed light on these questions and to highlight the need for sound economic analysis in policy development and evaluation.
I'm saddened to hear about Bruce's passing- I had no idea. Bruce was an icon in our field, and operated in just about every level you can think of- successful academic, department head, dean, Council of Economic Advisors. He is also one of the few ag economists that successfully published in the AER and other economics journals.
My enduring memory of Bruce is an influencial article of his from the 1970's dealing with marketing margins. I signed up to present a graduate seminar on his paper at the University of Minnesota, and found that I had difficulty recovering his conceptual results. Put differently, I couldn't do his algebra. In presenting the seminar, I found that the instructor and my grad student colleagues were also unable to solve out Bruce's algebra. Years later I was having lunch with Bruce and I reiterated this story to him and he was astounded that we couldn't solve his "simple" algebra!
He will be greatly missed.