Monday, March 9, 2009

Laurence S. Moss Dies

The History of Economics Society has announced that Larry Moss died on February 24, cause unknown, although he had suffered from various illnesses for several years. Larry had served as editor of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) for a number of years, and did an admirable job in my view, even though I did not see eye to eye with him on a variety of topics. That journal has long had a link with "Georgist" economics, although Larry's own interestes tended towards the libertarian and Austrian, having written books on both Joseph Schumpeter and Ludwig von Mises, and having coauthored with Israel Kirzner more than once.

Nevertheless, Larry always was open-minded and published papers that he clearly disagreed with. Thus, he was the editor who accepted the paper, "Keynesian Comparative Economics: The Iconoclastic Vision of Lynn Turgeon (1920-1999)," published in AJES in 2003 62(3), 491-508, Tim Canova, Ric Holt, Bob Horn, me, and Marina Rosser as coauthors. Turgeon, who died a decade ago tomorrow (and Canova has just issued a revised version of the paper on SSRN) held dramatically idiosyncratic views, but there is no way that they could be described as either libertarian, Austrian, or conservative. In any case, I guess this post is in memory and respect for both of these individuals, neither with us anymore.

1 comment:

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Larry Moss was at Babson College when he died at age 64. One can read his obituary in the Boston Globe at
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?n=dr-laurence-s-moss&pid=124634998.