An accidental economist: a brief history A series of accidents, mostly fortunate, made me the human being and economist that I am. It started with the accident of my birth, to a couple who were both economists. This, in my generation, was already a minor miracle – in the mid 1950s my mother somehow managed…

I was born 14 may 1954, and my childhood in Carnforth, Lancashire was idyllic. At the time I would have said it was unremarkable, as are most things when not viewed by comparison. The near-total freedom I enjoyed seemed perfectly natural. The town was an unpretentious rail­way town in North Lancashire, England. My father was…

Abiy Ahmed was born in Beshasha, Ethiopia. As a young man, Abiy Ahmed participated in the armed struggle against Mengistu’s communist regime in Ethiopia and later served in the Ethiopian military. Abiy studied computer science, leadership and economics, graduating in 2017 with a doctorate in peace and conflict research at Addis Ababa University. A long-time…

Peter Handke did not submit a biography.

Iwas born in 1948 in Detroit, Michigan to Abraham Isaac Milgrom and Anne Lillian Milgrom nee Finkelstein. Abraham Milgrom was born in Canada to Polish-Jewish immigrants, and Anne Finkelstein in Detroit, Michigan, to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants. I am the second of the Milgroms’ four sons; Stuart is my older brother and Barry and Steven are my…

Iwas born April 22, 1943 in New York City, where my parents were then living. I was their second child, but the first to survive. Three years later, after my sister was born, we moved to Woodmere, Long Island, a prosperous Jewish suburb on the south shore, known, like Great Neck on the north shore,…

1. Overview at age 83 After rocky early years, I had a happy youth in a small town, and then stumbled through eight years at Harvard, emerging with little sense of what to do next, until I moved to Stanford where my research thrived. A minor project on adverse selection in auctions led me to…

Paul M. Romer did not submit a biography.

I first saw light in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, at the dawn of World War II. My earliest memories are of the warm climate, skiing in winter, trout fishing in summer, and a fragrant alfalfa field outside my window. How did I get from an alfalfa field in New Mexico in the 1940s to Stockholm…

Summary I was born (14 April 1951) in Leicester, England but spent most of my childhood in the Gold Coast (later Ghana). The family returned to England in 1964, settling in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There I went to the Royal Grammar School, which developed my interests in chemistry and biology and set me on a path to…