On Monday morning (April 23, 2018), the Grim Reaper cut down Leland Yeager—a great scholar, collaborator, and friend. I share the sentiments about Leland that have already been expressed by David Gordon, David Henderson, and George Selgin.
To fill in the picture, I will recount my first encounter with Leland, which took place in the summer of 1967. Then, I will leap ahead to the last email I received from Leland on April 5, 2018.
I first met Leland in the summer of 1967, when I attended a short course on the principles of economics at the University of Virginia. The course was offered to young faculty with an interest in free-market economics. I qualified because I had recently joined the faculty of the Colorado School of Mines. What a course it was. The Big Guns lectured. They included: Armen Alchian, Bill Allen, Bill Breit, Jim Buchanan, Warren Nutter, Gordon Tullock, and Leland Yeager. Leland presented the lectures on international trade. I can still recall them. He arrived fully prepared and ready to go—armed with a yardstick. Yes, a yardstick, which Leland used to draw complicated trade diagrams. And, typical of Leland, he did so with great precision. Indeed, Leland is the only professor I have ever observed who could, and did, draw picture-perfect diagrams on a chalkboard. Even while lecturing, Leland was an ever-careful and precise scholar.
Fast forward 50-plus years, and we arrive at the last email I received from Leland (April 5, 2018). Our correspondence over the past few years has largely focused on a book project that we have been collaborating on. Our book’s main idea – to treat waiting as a factor of production, and its price (the interest rate) as a reminder of the opportunity cost – contributes to unifying economic theory and identifying errors. Fortunately, our manuscript for Capital and Interest is complete, thanks largely to Leland’s work and scholarship. As I recently promised Leland, I anticipate having the manuscript cleaned and ready to go to the publisher this summer.
As our work on Capital and Interest progressed, Leland would always add what I considered to be a throw-away line about his advancing years and ill-health. I thought Leland would make it into triple digits. However, in his last email, Leland alarmingly went way beyond his usual grumblings about his age and ill-health. He wrote, “At age 93 and suffering from weakness, fatigue, various ailments, and severe pains (most recently from osteoporosis), I must admit that I am in no condition to contribute much more to the MS.” Leland’s shot across the bow shocked me because he remained as sharp as a tack. Indeed, in his last email, Leland did what he had always done: he never stopped turning over ideas and fretting about the quality of his work. Until his dying day, Leland remained to me that precise professor who lectured with a yardstick – a master of rhetoric, blackboard economics, and much, much more.
