All right, good afternoon everyone and
thank you for joining us in this uh for
this incredible day at Northwestern. My
name is John Yates. I'm the vice
president for global marketing and
communications at Northwestern. Today
you're going to hear from our president
Henry Bean, Adrien Randolph, uh our dean
of the Weineberg College of Arts and
Sciences, and finally from our Nobel
Prize winner in economic sciences, Joel Moir.
After brief comments, Professor Mo here
will then take some questions from the
media in attendance. And we also have
some questions that media who could not
attend but are watching on the live
stream uh submitted in in advance. So
I'll be asking him those questions as
well. So I think we'll just get this
started. Um I'm going to first welcome
up President Bean to say a couple words.
So President Henry Bean, you want to
join us up here? [Applause]
[Applause]
Thank you, John. Well, today it's a
great day for my friend Joel Moir and
for Northwestern. We recognize Joel Moir
on this remarkable achievement of the
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Because Joel is an economic historian,
he will remember that we shared a um
line or file in the old gym where we had
lockers next to each other. So I know
him pretty well from that. Uh but
seriously speaking on uh Joel on behalf
of Northwestern's faculty, staff,
students, alumni, and friends across the
globe, we congratulate you and we thank
you for demonstrating this university's
greatness on the world stage. And I
congratulate all your colleagues in
economics and in history. At
Northwestern, we often talk about
interdisciplinary work as a cornerstone
of our strength and professor Moir
reflects that strength with a research
that brings together economics,
history, science, and technology.
Northwestern is one of the world's most
preeminent universities precisely
because of our brilliant faculty like
Professor Moir and they push the
boundaries of research in their quest to
improve the human experience.
Professor Moir's research focuses on
innovation and growth and the important
role that science plays in the
advancement of our society. Importantly,
his research also highlights the need
for society to be open to change. These
are themes that resonate deeply as
institutions across the country,
including ours, work to demonstrate the
value of our research, not only to our
elected officials, but to each and every
member of the public. Today, we reflect
on the important factors that lead to
prosperity and how we may apply them.
moving forward.
Many congratulations are in order. We
once again congratulate Professor Moir.
We also congratulate his fellow prize
winners, Professor Aon, Phipe Aion, and
Peter Howard. We congratulate his
colleagues in the department of
economics and the department of history.
We congratulate the college of arts and
sciences including Dean Adrien Randolph
who will be here in a moment. And we
congratulate everybody, every faculty
member, postdoal researcher, staff
member and student who contributes to
this amazing academic community where
research thrives and where students have
a front row seat in history. Thank you
very much. [Applause]
[Applause]
Hello, I'm Adrienne Randolph, dean of
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
And for those of us fortunate enough to
know Joel McKe, we know what a gem he
is. And I hope many more will find out
about him in the days to come owing to
this extraordinary recognition. Joel is
a remarkable scholar, teacher, and
human. It really is gratifying to see
him named Nobel Prize winner in economic
sciences in 2025. It is fully deserved.
Joel arrived, as I'm sure you can read,
but I'll just recap, at Northwestern in
1974 and quickly rose through the ranks
and was named in 1994 the Robert H.
Stroz Professor. He's a proud member of
both our topranked economics department
and our topranked history department. He
is moreover co-director of the center
for economic history. He is the author
of scores of books. I can't possibly
name them all but to give you a taste of
the range of his topics that he covers.
Uh his books here are a sampling.
Industrialization in the low countries.
Economics of the industrial revolution.
The lever of riches. Techn technological
creativity and economic progress. The
gifts of Athena. Historical origins of
the knowledge economy and a culture of
growth. Origins of the modern economy.
Prolific and influential Moir has. His
ideas have circulated globally.
comfortable in the worlds of Renaissance
humanism and in the early modern
Republic of Letters in the 15th and 16th
century, in the scientific revolutions
of the 17th century and in the sometimes
hotheaded debates of the enlightenment
and romanticism the 18th and 19th
centuries. Mochir mingles a deep
commitment to intellectual history with
the histories of science, technology,
and markets associated with the long
industrial revolution.
Rather than trying to sum up uh
professor Mokio's scholarship, let me
just offer one citation which I think uh
or quotation which really captures some
of the spirit of his work. I'll just set
the scene. The book uh a culture of
growth charts the intricate web and uh
of ideas and experts connecting
fundamental discoveries in science and
technology to the development of our
modern economy. Supporting this thesis
is a remarkable SCE of cultural threads
drawn from well-known and very little
known sources. He links pathblazing
experts educated in the new discoveries
of fundamental science to what he calls
tweakers and tinkerers who spread
knowledge and technical skill across
Europe and the world. Among Moir's key
insights is this visionary and topical
claim. quote, "The liberal ideas of
religious tolerance, free entry into the
market for ideas, and belief in the
transnational character of the
intellectual community were essential to
enlightenment thought. These were the
cultural underpinnings that not only
supported a functioning market for
ideas, that is a market in which
innovators had a fair chance to persuade
their audiences, they also actively
encouraged intellectual innovation and
thus laid the foundation for the
emergence of the modern economy.
Joel reminds us that cultural
commitments to tolerance, to academic
freedom, and to internationalism are the
preconditions of our economy. These
values upheld within institutions like
our university which depends on
pluralism and rationality are the
building blocks for many of the advances
that stream through successful markets
and societies. And these values are
worth underscoring as we celebrate today
our colleague and friend Joel McKe. Joel.
Joel. [Applause]
[Applause]
as you might uh as you might all imagine
um I'm still a little bit dazed by you
know what transpired uh today but I want
to start with something completely
unrelated to this prize and that is that
this is a very special day for me seeing
seeing the return of 20 live hostages of
my countrymen uh this morning which um
you know warms my heart far more than
any other personal achievement that I
can can ever get. Uh so it was this
morning when I got up early and I dashed
off to my laptop to check whether
these uh hostage has been returned.
And then I noticed in my email there
were all these messages of
congratulations. And I go, you know
what, this is what what are they
congratulating me for? And I thought it
was maybe people mistaken my birthday or
something. But uh but now I mean there
was an an
a missed call from with a country code
of 42 which is Sweden and then all of a
suen something started to dawn on me
still trying to digest this. It will
probably take you know a couple of
weeks. Um so as Andrea and Adrien said
I'm an economic historian. I've been an
economic historian at Northwestern for
um 51 years now. I'm starting my uh 52nd.
52nd.
Uh still going strong. Uh and um I have
been a proud member of two of not just
the university's most distinguished
department but the world's most
distinguished department. Um the
economics department um and the history
department of which I'm in both of them
a full citizen. um being in those two
departments um is quite interesting uh
in part because the two cultures are
essentially non-over overlapping and you
know in in history and in Harris Hall
it's a very different world than when
you're in the in in the Kellogg building
um different language you know different
people but they share a commitment to
scholarship and to teaching uh second to
none and it's been I've been very proud
to be a member of both of those
departments Also, as I said, it does
lead to some u interesting situations. I
think there was a time when I was
simultaneously the most leftwing member
of the economics department and the most
right-wing member of the history
department. Uh which is still which is
still possible. So, having been here for
as I said over 50 years, of course, both
departments changed over time. Many
colleagues left and passed on and new
colleagues joined. I think the
commitment to scholarship and to true uh
intellectual activity has remained
constant over time and if anything uh
has improved. And one of the joys uh of
my life here has been not just those
books that that Henry talked about you
know you know you write them because
what else is there to do but um training
graduate students and over these years I
have a large number of brilliant
graduate students in economics and in
history and many of them today I'm proud
to say occupy positions in some of the
best universities uh in the country. uh
some of them have their their own
students and these students have their
students. So I have actually
intellectual great grandchildren which
is kind of a bit of a an an awesome
feeling and some of my students former
students actually are retiring. So um
the news for you Adrian is no way I'm
going to go retire. Okay? So no don't
worry even if my students are retiring
not me. All right. So I'm not going to
talk a lot about economic history here
because you know it would get boring and
technical but I do want to make one or
two points
uh that I think are worth uh thinking
about. Um in 1994
uh the Nobel committee awarded for the
first time an a Nobel Prize to two
economic historians uh Robert Fogle and
Douglas North. I still remember very
well the morning when the news came. I
had a graduate student at Washington
University where Doug taught and he
called me and said, "Joel, did you hear
that uh Fogle and North won the Nobel
Prize?" And I had tears in my eyes of of
excitement because this was us. This was
us the tribe of economic historians
being recognized by the economics
profession in a way that we didn't
really feel possible. Since then uh more
economic historians have received the
Nobel Prize although somehow the Nobel
committee managed to dress it up as if
it was for something else. So Claudia
Golden at Harvard got it for her work on
gender economics. But of course Claudia
is a 100% economic historian. She and I
came on the scene almost at the same
time. So slightly younger the people who
got it last year, Darona Simoglu and Jim
Robinson, both of whom got it for work
they did in economic history. Although
if you knew Don Simoglu, you realize
he's active in another 12 fields in in
in in economics. But that's what they
got the prize for. So I want to cite two
things that I learned from those Nobel
Prize winners and explore it meaning
just for a second. Uh Bob Fogle
said to me once, you know, Joel,
economics must deal with economic
history. He says, for economics to work
without economic history is like an
evolutionary biologist without paleontology.
paleontology.
And if you don't have paleontology, you
just miss 99.5%
of all the species that ever walked this
earth. And so I teach economic history
in some sense keeping that in mind that
we can observe in the past
economic systems, economic societies,
economic interactions that we don't have
anymore. Some of them just as well, you
know, I mean formal slave markets,
feudalism, uh a whole bunch of of of
other things that have disappeared from
this earth. And you know, we're not
sorry about to to leave. But if we don't
study those, okay, we're really missing
a great deal of what economics can teach
us. And so u that's what I spend my life doing.
doing.
Doug who was a very close personal
friend u once said to me and we had a
long Doug was Mr. institutions. He
talked about you know whatever it was
that they he talked he was thinking
about institutions always somehow came
up. uh and he said to me once and I'll
keep citing that that that line because
it's really meaningful. He said, "Joel,
you know, there's a good reason why we
economic historians speak of
technological progress but institutional change."
change."
And he said, you know, the reason is
very simple. Technology really by and
large advances and has an upward trend
in large parts because it's cumulative,
right? So we know what the people before
us knew but they don't know what we
know. So we always know more and so our
technology is getting better. You know
one could argue with that on the fringes
but as a first approximation it's not
bad but institutions he says there's no
such trend. There is no way that we can
show that they get better over time.
They do go up they go they do go down. I
mean there's periods in which
institutions all over the world were
getting remarkably worse particularly
the inter war period in the 20th century
say and they they get better in the
years after 1945 and then again after
maybe uh 1989 90 but he says
subsequently they will come down again
and it seems that there's some evidence
to show that that's what's happening uh
today that's an I think I think an
extremely important lesson from uh
economic history because as technology
gives us more power over nature and more
ways you know to achieve our goals and
to harness the forces of nature to our
goals. uh if the institutions are bad
and by institutions north meant and I
think most of us mean essentially the
rules of the game in economics and in
politics and if institutions get worse
while technology gets better the outcome
can be quite devastating to the people
and so that sort of once you think about
it it's kind of obvious right so you
know you make a hammer you build a
technological tool um you It can be used
to build a home and it can be used to
bash uh you know uh Abel and Cain's
heads in. That's I think something
that's true across the board for uh
technological change throughout the
ages. Gunpowder can be used to fight
wars and it can be used to build
tunnels. Um, and I think the same is
true for the things that are on the
horizon today, including artificial
intelligence, genetic engineering, and
so on and and so forth. So, there's some
I'm an optimist, and I've always been an
optimist, as my as my colleague Bob
Gordon, who's been here since I've been,
and we've been had many interesting
conversations about this. So um
but I think we should always keep in
mind that technology can be abused but
that by and large it is still true that
if you had to choose a year in human
history in which you wanted to be born,
I would choose 1925
because I still think that our
capability of creating techniques that
make our lives better, more comfortable,
uh longer, reduce disease, reduce
mortality, keeps us cool in the summer
and warm in the winter and make sure
that we eat well, that those techniques
will continue to improve. And in so far
that things go wrong and unfortunately
there are still famines in this world
and there's still people not getting an
education. It is not the fault of
technology. It is the fault of our
institutions that haven't been getting better.
better.
Now there is before I
quit this there's something I I do want
to point out and that is there is a
literature today that basically says you
know we really should stop innovation
you know we growth is bad you know this
whole anti-growth thing all it's you
know it's done it's it's brought misery
on this world you know my late colleague
in the history department and brilliant
brilliant historian called David
Gerovski whom I love dearly
But David once yelled at me says, "What
is all this talk about technological
progress? It's not getting better. You
know, life in cities was terrible. You
know, people were the water cities were
dirty and smoky." You know, and you
know, my my point is, David, and I said
this to him, David, you want one number
to show you how things are getting
better? look at infant mortality
statistics and see how much better our
life is than it than it was a 100 years
ago, 200 years ago. Now that said, the
human race faces two of the greatest
challenges that it has ever faced and
these things have no real precedent. So
history is not a very good guide here,
but it's something that we have to face
and we have to think about with the
tools that history provides us. Even if
history itself doesn't give you an
answer and those are
climate change and the demographic
change and they're very different in
their nature and they're very different
in the solutions but given that the only
way in which we can cope with this
crisis is inventing ourselves out of it.
Uh I strongly urge the world to keep
putting efforts
and money and resources and incentives
to the people who trying to invent us
out of these two crisis.
Uh and I think if we achieve that I
think technology
uh will have fulfilled its role. Now
this is not an uncontroversial point.
Um, but I think there seems to be almost
no other way of dealing with it. And so
I want to say seeing everybody here and
the many emails that I've gotten um I
have, as we call it in economics, have
enough warm glow to contribute
marginally to climate change. Thank you
I'm just gonna Yeah. All right. Thank
you, Professor Moir. We're gonna take
some questions now from from the
audience and from the media. Who do you
want to go back up here and uh I'll
distribute these microphones to my team
over here. If there are folks in the
audience, I do have some questions from
the media um who sent them in ahead of
time as well.
Do we have anyone who's got some
Nobody? If not, then I will read from
the questions that were submitted ahead
of time. All right, we'll try we'll try
a couple of these real quick. All right.
Um, so the first question comes from I'm
just going to sit over here so we're
closer together. Um the first question
comes from um an outlet in South Korea
called Eaily and the question is South
Korea has experienced rapid
technological advancement and industrial
growth yet faces slowing productivity
and structural rigidity. From your
research on historical roots of uh
innovation and sustained growth, what
lessons do you think countries like
Korea can take uh to ensure that
innovation continues to translate into
long-term prosperity? Yeah, I I must say
I I find it slightly ironic that this
question comes to me from
South Korea because in my lecture about
institutions, I always contrast as is
almost inevitable South Korea with North
Korea to exemplify the fact that if you
have reasonably good institutions, you
do a heck of a lot a lot better than if
you have lousy institutions as they do
in Pyongy. young. I mean, that seems
kind of obvious and I think Asterogl and
Robinson made this point and everybody
makes this point and so to to to worry
about the South Korean problems given
that it is a wealthy peaceful country um
that um you know has miraculously pulled
itself up from very low income per
capita in the 1950s to one of the
wealthier nations in the world today
strikes me as as sort of a I mean if you
worry about South Korea, what do you
think about North Korea, what do you
think about, you know, other countries,
Myanmar, countries like that. Those are
the countries I worry about. South Korea
has should continue to do what it has
been doing all these times. It should
make sure its borders are open, that it
is tapped into the best practice
technologies of this world, and they
should have more babies. That I think is
the one concern that causing, you know,
some kind of stagnation in South Korea.
I think they have one of the lowest
birth rates on this planet. You know, I
mean maybe this is a choice that they
made. I think there's another question
here about fertility. We come we can
come back to that. But in terms of
technological innovation, I mean
some people here in the audience must be
driving a Korean-made car. And uh I
don't think that they would feel very
much inclined to think of these
Korean-made cars as an example of bad
technology. If you want an example of a
bad technology, look at the cars that
were made in the Eastern Europe before
it collapsed. And you know, if you ever
wanted to see a really bad car, you
should try a Trabant, which is now a
museum piece. Now, South Korea doesn't
make Trabons. They make cars that run
and run and run. So to say that I'm
really in all due respect um really
worried about their economic future.
Many other countries on this planet
would like to change to trade places
with them.
That's that's great. A follow-up
question from the same outlet. How
important do you believe openness and
the free exchange of knowledge are for
sustaining growth in an era of growing
geopolitical and technological
fragmentation? Well, I'm a, you know, a
great fan of the free exchange of
knowledge. I'm also a great fan of the
free exchange of anything else,
including goods and services. So um my
big advice to countries like that is
stay open and keep the country not only
open in terms of its boundaries but of
it the freedom of its people to say what
they want to have a free press to have
free elections. Um South Korea has had a
reasonably successful democracy. I mean
nobody has a perfect democracy. We we
should know that by now. But uh uh but
South Korea has made the transition to
democracy. And yeah, so if you when you
when you go make that transition to
democracy and to a free society, you
realize that Churchill was right in his
famous cliche about democracy being the
worst of all systems except for the for
all the others. And South Korea has has
its you know its warts and its trouble
and you know follow the news and you
realize you know that it doesn't always
get the the best people to become
politicians but it is a successful
country. Now they are located in an
awkward part of the world of course
because they are a small country right
to a very big other country and that
always is a is a tricky situation to be
I mean I studied Ireland for in my
younger days and you know that's was a
small country right next to a bigger
country and it didn't always work very
well for them. Um, Korea has been able,
thanks in part through American support,
uh, to pull itself up from its poverty.
We're talking about the southern party,
not the northern part. And, um, I think
they should, I see no particular reason
why that can't continue uh, uh, except
for the sort of threat of demography
which I talked about.
All right. The next question comes from
uh the outlet Dzite in Hamburg, Germany.
Question is, do you believe that the
exploration of history should play a
larger role in economics and how could
this be achieved?
Well, it is already playing a larger
role in in economics. I'm I'm proud to
say that here at Northwestern we have u seven
seven
scholars who are basically full-time
economic historians on the faculty and
then a number of people around who still
work in the field and hang around like
my friend Lu Kaine in the audience
there. um uh it is becoming a very
popular field in economics and and and
it's not just that we have more and more
interest in the past but I think there
are other things about economic history
once you that make that make it
attractive um economics in my lifetime
which is a long time um has changed in
the following sense theory is still very
much an important part of our field. But
I think by and large the center of
gravity has shifted from theoretical
work to empirical work and to you know
big data some smaller data but you know
empirical work has gotten much more I
think respect than it did 40 or 50 years
ago. Now economic history of course is
you know by its very nature an empirical
field but it's also has been I think
exceptionally been able to take
advantage of new data collection and
data generation techniques that are be
coming online and are getting better uh
every year and so the fact that both
graduate students and young faculty uh
are flowing to u economic history is I
think a sign of the times not only in
that people are interested in the past,
which I sincerely hope they do, but also
because the op the options of generating
and and collecting data that uh weren't
available before are becoming online and
nobody has done more to create that than
my colleague Joe Ferry who's sitting in
the back and Joe
essentially was one of the first pioneers
pioneers
in uh using very large samples of data
taken from the full count American
censuses in order to study American
mobility and many other aspects uh that
require large data sets. So I think
economic history has a bright future and
I am uh imploring all major economics
departments that do not have a full-time
economic historian uh on in their ranks.
Um I won't name them by name but
Princeton and Penn are among them. uh
uh to hire uh a young economic historian
which we are producing every year and
they are we have three of them on the
market this year and I will do all I can
to persuade these universities to hire
my students.
Excellent. All right. Uh the next
question comes from uh the Associated
Press. You have often spoken positively
about technological innovation. How are
you feeling about AI, which as you know
has sparked concerns about everything
from the elimination of jobs to darker
scenarios like whether it could develop
deadly viruses?
Well, my day wouldn't be complete if I
didn't have a question about AI. I think
wherever I go, people ask me questions
about AI. Um,
it's a tool, a notion that somehow AI is
this monstrosity that lurks, you know,
somewhere beneath us and they will
eventually come and, you know, drive the
human race into extinction and take over
the planet. I mean, this is these people
have read too much dystopian science
fiction. Nothing of the sort is ever
going to happen. In fact, the whole idea
that machines are in more intelligent
than we are seems to assume that
intelligence is a single metric uh in
which we sort of measure a machine's IQ
and compare it to I but this that's
complete nonsense. I mean of course
human intelligence is multi-dimensional
um and it's always been the case that we
use machines to do things that we can't
do ourselves because our senses and the
size of our brain aren't good enough.
Okay. So we uh we can't see bacteria uh
either. So we build a microscope and we
see bacteria. We can't see the planets
of jup the moons of Jupiter. So um we
build a telescope and we see them. We
can't do zillions of calculations in a
second. So we have highowered computers.
Uh that doesn't make the computer more
intelligent. It just means that in a
particular dimension they can do things
that we can't. AI is an information
aggregator. Okay. It knows what we fed
it and it has access, you know, at at
very high speed. It can process it in in
ways that we tell it to do. But the
notion that they have human intelligence
that includes initiative and intuition
and ambition and things like that seems
to be really fancyful. And that's not, I
think, what's on the near horizon. I
mean who knows what's going to happen 50
years from now but at the moment that I
see AI primarily as a magnificent
research assistant and uh we've had
previous my you know my PC is a
wonderful research assistant uh for many
people doing research we have other new
tools that have come online power much
more powerful microscopes lasers all
kind of things that we use to do
research and what one lesson that you
could take away from the scientific
revolution of the 17th century is that
science advances when the tools that are
at the disposal of researchers are
getting better and that's basically
Galileo and his telescope and hook and
his microscope coming up with new
insight because they had better tools.
AI is another powerful tool and
everybody in this room unless I'm
terribly mistaken is using it in some
way and I'm as guilty as the next guy.
It hasn't. It's not sinking for me. It's
just, you know, giving access to
information much faster than I need it.
Uh sometimes the wrong information, but
you you got to be careful. But I don't
see AI as a threat to humanity. Now,
what will its effect be on the labor
market? And um there's 200 years of
history in which people have been
predicting that machines would kick us
all out of a job and turn us into this
sort of uh uh un reserve army of the
unemployed as Markx famously called it.
Um and though I a decade ago wrote an
article for the journal of economic
literature uh with two former students
pointing out that you know um so This
prediction was made over and over and
over again. There's actually very few
instances of long-term technological
unemployment in which people are being
thrown out of work and that is just
sitting there, you know, dazed on the
streets without ever having a job. Um it
is true of course that as technology
advances some occupations and some tasks
become mechanized and usually uh usually
these people find other jobs. Now
there's friction there and some people
for some people this maybe may be
difficult but I'll give you one example
of my own experience here at
Northwestern that will illustrate this.
When I came here in 1974, I was assigned
a secretary
and what the secretary did uh was
basically type. So I would give her a
manuscript and she would type it up and
then I would fix it and she would put
you know these white out and these sort
of white tapes in which she corrected it
and and then we go through four or five
iterations of like that and by the time
we were done it was a total mess but it
was typed and you could send it uh to a
journal and then one day word processing
came around
and uh you know we were told oh the
secretary will do no more typing you got
to do your own typing.
And so fine. So what happened to the
secretaries? And it turns out the
secretaries instead of becoming typist
became organizers.
They run things. They talk to students.
And you know I'll tell you a world in
which uh the professors type and the
secretaries talk to students is better
for the professors for the secretaries
and for the students. And so um in a way
the you know we we have about as many
secretaries in economics now as we had
at the time but I would never never even
imagine to ask one of them to do any of
my typing. Instead they run things for
us they organize things for us you know
and you know my sense is that probably
much more interesting and challenging
for them. I think that kind of
phenomenon is true across the labor
force. We the machines don't replace us.
they move us to more interesting, more
challenging work. And as AI moves us up
um to take these jobs over, people will
move to even higher jobs. So it's worth
pointing out perhaps and this is made an
argument made in great detail by my by
last year's uh Nobel Prize winner Daron
Smoglu. He said, you know, technological
change not only replaces people in, it
creates new tasks.
And um and I told him, you know, we were
talking about this paper. I said, you
know, my grandmother, you know, in 1910
was to be told that her great
grandchildren would be video game
programmers and cyber security experts.
She wouldn't have the foggiest idea what
we're talking about. what you know what
kind of jobs are these and I think just
as that was the case I think it's true
today we cannot imagine the new tasks
and jobs that will be uh necessary to
fill for people in the future but for
what you know for for just to make the
final point as I see it the main concern
about the labor market is not
technological unemployment it's labor scarcity
scarcity
that you know fewer and fewer people
entering the labor force, more and more
people are retiring and they sort of
there's this you know age hollowing out
in the sense that the people supposed to
pay their taxes and their social
security are disappearing and the people
who receive social security such as
myself uh their numbers are multiplying.
So for that you need some for some kind
of mechanism that will do the work and
if demography won't do it then
technology will have to do it. So my
sense is that that you know insight
uh from history is is um quite I think
important. Now I can't rule out
uh some dystopian outcome you know like
in this u
famous Kurt Vonagut model novel that I
read in graduate school called player
piano. Um it's a brilliant book and he
sort of describes this world in which
basically nobody's working anymore. You
can't rule that out because, you know,
who knows what the future will bring.
But John Maynard Kanes, the great
economist, once described
uh a world um called e it's a little
essay called economic prospects for our
grandchildren in which he talked about a 15hour
15hour
work week.
Well, I'm still waiting for that one.
Me, too.
Yes. So, we probably have time for one
more if there's anyone in the crowd. I
do have another one on my phone which I
left over on the other seat. So, I'm
going to get that while uh offer one
more opportunity for anyone who's here.
Okay, we do have one. All right. And if
you could speak up as you ask. Um uh
it's a little harder to hear up here.
All right, Deborah.
Sure. Hi. Hi, Joel. Congratulations.
I'm very curious about what your
solution to the demographic crisis is
because I know that yours is different
Yeah.
Did you Did you hear it? Yeah.
Could you repeat the question, Deborah?
My curiosity is my Don't fall off the
edge of the stage. My my curiosity is um
what is your solution for the
demographic uh crisis? And I was joking
that your solution is surely different
from Elon Musk's. Uh
in other words, let me just put a
I was told by the authorities in my residence
residence
not to stay away from politics
as much as I can. Um, and I already said
to somebody who interviewed me on the
phone today that when I when I heard
Nick Richard Nixon resign,
uh, I could I thought I would never
imagine a worse president possible and
I've had second thoughts about that one.
U, but that's as far as I'll say about
about politics. But look, I mean there
is I think a concern
which is not new either because we've
seen the same thing you know in the
guilded age that you know
extraordinarily rich people will have
undue influence on the political process
and that is the nature of a democratic
capital. No, no, no. What I'm asking
about demographic, the demographic
crisis and what your how you conceive of
the solution to the demographic crisis.
Well, the solution to the demographics,
that's a really tough one because this
is not a matter of policy. It's a matter
of individual decision makers who have decided
decided
to have smaller families and who are
capable of controlling their fertility.
It is not an American phenomenon. It's a
worldwide phenomenon. And u and so I
know there is a movement
called natalism which is trying to encourage
encourage
people to have more babies. And I'm not
actually persuaded as an economist that
that actually will make us better off.
If it is assuming that the decisions are
being made by people with good control
over their fertility, I can't see why I
as a policy maker or anybody else should
think of a society in which you know the
average family size is one child rather
than three or four. Why that be a worse
society? Remember, you know, the world
has grown enormously demographically
since 1945. You know, in 1950, we had
about half the population we have now.
Wasn't all that terrible. In fact,
everybody was really scared u uh about
some kind of Malthusian explosion of
population. So, if we're going to go
from eight billion to six billion, you
know, will it be will the planet really
get worse? I mean, it's hard to think
so. Uh
I don't think we'll ever get to a stage
in which demographic behavior will lead
us to extinction.
But I do um so there's this is a debate
I'm having with some fairly learned
colleagues who worried about that. Um, I
know of no theory in economics that says
what is the optimal population of the
world or even the optimal population of
any specific country.
What I do think is that the distribution
of population over the over the world
today may not be optimal and that the
fact that you know you should really
allow people across the world to move if
they want to move and the notion that
somehow the United States is full or
Canada is full is reasonable right I
mean countries aren't full I lived in
Israel for years you know it's very it's
very crowded. You know, people manage,
you know, there's bigger traffic jams,
but then so what? I lived in the I was
born in the Netherlands, even more
crowded. Yeah. Okay. And then you can go
and, you know, and live in a country u
which is you know very large and underpopulated.
underpopulated.
Uh so I mean does that make a country
good or bad? I mean it's Canada relative
to its surface is a very small
population. doesn't seem to have
affected quality of life in Canada. So I
don't actually think that the
demographic um problem is is is an
existential one. Where it gets to be
existential is that in the transition
from a larger to a smaller population,
the age distribution changes. And when
the age distribution changes, you may
have a problem of u you know the
actuarial nature of the social security
system which is what every country is
facing. And um I just heard today on on
on on the radio that you know Mron's m
biggest achievement was to raise the age
of retirement in France which are now
trying to to undo but that is the kind
of change that we can adjustment that we
can make when the population changes and
when there's too many old for guys
around and too few people working that I
think is is is a fair criticism but I
must A world that has half the
population that it is today doesn't
for this right here. Yeah.
Yeah.
All right. I think I'm gonna uh bring
Dean Randolph back up here for a quick
toast if that's all right.
Either way.
Can I invite Jeff Elie, chair of the
department of economics, and Kevin Bole,
chair of the department of history, and Maggalite,
Maggalite,
I don't know where she is, up to the stage,
stage,
Oh, celebratory. [Applause]
Come on then.
Yeah. And then why don't you come in
here? Maybe I'll get I think you'll have
the cluster. So maybe I'll speak uh
start speaking. Uh Joel
uh as we get our charge our uh flutes
with bubbly uh on behalf of the
president uh your colleagues Weineberg
College uh we just want to express our
extraordinary pride in your achievement.
Uh I hope that in the coming days that
you revel in reflecting on your career
and thinking back to all the people who
have made this possible and I understand
I think you'll be the first to
acknowledge as you did. It's the
students, the colleagues, the colleagues
at other institutions that sustain the
type of work you've produced throughout
your career and is being recognized
today. Uh we could not be happier that
it happened to such a wonderful
colleague and friend as you and again
speaking for your departments. Uh
congratulations and we have a tradition
in Weineberg College uh which I hope you
will indulge me with where we raise our
glasses and have three chairs. So, hip hip
hip hooray.
hooray.
Hip hip hooray.
hooray.
Hip hip hooray.
hooray.
So, thank you all for coming. With that,
that is the end of the formal ceremony.
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