Finance & economics | Free exchange

William Baumol, a great economist, died on May 4th

A prolific writer and originator of the idea of “cost disease”, he was 95

|5 min read

ON MAY 4th William Baumol, one of the great economists of the 20th century, died. Mr Baumol, who kept working into his 90s, published more than 500 papers across a dazzling array of topics; his best-known work, describing “cost disease”, was essentially a side-project. He was a scholar whose stray thought on a sleepless night could change how people see the world.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Embrace the contradictions”

Trumponomics: What it is, and why it is dangerous

From the May 13th 2017 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition
illustration of a map of Africa with a large pixelated cursor pointing at Zambia, which is highlighted in yellow

Want to be a good explorer? Study economics

The battle to reduce risk has shaped centuries of ventures

Illustration of a hand pushing a jagged black arrow upward against a red background. The Jane Street logo appears to be rolling down the arrow in the opposite direction.

Jane Street is chucked out of India. Other firms should be nervous

Around the world, marketmakers now face extra scrutiny


A man looks at an advertisement for the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) displayed at a branch of Nomura Securities Co., a unit of Nomura Holdings Inc., in the Kichijoji area of Tokyo, Japan.

Japan has been hit by investing fever

Will old folk catch the bug?


Don’t invest through the rearview mirror

Markets are supposed to look forward; plenty of investors look back instead

Trump’s trade deals try a creative way to hobble China

To appease the world’s biggest market, countries must anger the world’s biggest trader

The great dealmaker is conspicuously short of trade deals

Donald Trump issues threats—and grants deadline extensions