David Colander
Encyclopedia
David C. Colander is the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...

. He is known for his study of the economics profession itself, and the sociology of economics. His books The Making of an Economist and its later edition, The Making of an Economist, Redux, have been called "essential reading for prospective graduate students". He has authored over 35 books and 100 articles on a wide variety of subjects. On IDEAS
Research Papers in Economics
Research Papers in Economics is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 57 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles and software components. The project started...

, he is listed in the top 5% of authors in a number of categories. He has expressed interest in complexity economics
Complexity economics
Complexity economics is the application of complexity science to the problems of economics. It studies computer simulations to gain insight into economic dynamics, and avoids the assumption that the economy is a system in equilibrium.- Models :...

. His latest work focuses on economic education, complexity, and the methodology appropriate to applied policy economics.

Professor Colander received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and has taught at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

, the University of Miami, and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 as well as Middlebury College. In 2001-2002 he was the Kelley Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He has been president of both the Eastern Economic Association and History of Economic Thought Society and is, or has been, on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including Journal of Economic Perspectives and the Journal of Economic Education. He has also been a consultant to Time-Life Films, a consultant to Congress, a Brookings Policy Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford. He is listed in Who's Who?, Who's Who in Education?, etc.

In an article entitled "Confessions of an Economic Gadfly", Colander relayed the story of his progression as an economist. He states that he is inspired by the "Yeah criterion" – intuitive explanations that seem to fit. He also discusses the influence of mathematics on economics and his career. He says that he is not an "ultramathematician", and is comfortable taking an intuitive approach to economic ideas. Thus he did not favor what he called "the MIT approach" of formalism. He believes that the MIT approach limits one's intuition, and recollects encountering colleagues who an example of a colleague who refused to discuss economic ideas without formal models. Despite Colander's aversion to simplified formal models, he began his career working on a mathematical project. He got his break, however, when he collaborated with Abba P. Lerner
Abba P. Lerner
Abba Ptachya Lerner was an American economist.Lerner was born on October 28, 1903 in Bessarabia . He grew up in a Jewish family, which emigrated to Great Britain when Lerner was three years old. Lerner grew up in the London East End. From the age of sixteen he worked as a machinist, a teacher in...

on a book. After that, he was able to publish in certain journals. He began to write textbooks, and since then his recognition has grown to the point where he turns down invitations to speak, and tries to focus his publications in areas where his ideas are less well-known.

External links

  • http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/majors/econ/hours/colander.htm
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