Caricature by Roger Vaughan in The Journal of Progressive Hedonists Against Radical Thought [P.H.A.R.T.], Special All-Picture Issue (1973). Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches. Box 129, Folder “Posters, ca. 1960s-1970s.”
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The life and career of Marc Nerlove
b. 12 Oct 1933, d. 10 Jul 2024
Marc Leon Nerlove (born 1933) is a white American agricultural economist and econometrician who was born on 12 October 1933 in Chicago, Illinois to Dr. S. H. (Samuel Henry; 1902-1972) and Evelyn (1907-1987) Nerlove. S. H. Nerlove was born in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus) and brought to the US by his parents in 1904, and he became a professor of business economics at the University of Chicago (circa 1922-1965) then the University of California, Los Angeles (1962-1969). Evelyn Nerlove was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and worked at the University of Chicago hospital and taught in the School of Social Service Administration until a university nepotism policy forced her to resign after their marriage in 1932 (although she “returned to her profession” in the 1950s). S. H. and Evelyn had two other children: Harriet Nerlove (circa 1937-2019), who became a clinical psychologist at Stanford University then in New York City, and Sara “Sally” Nerlove (born circa 1942), who became an anthropologist before spending most of her working life as a program officer at the National Science Foundation.
Marc Nerlove attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools from 1939-1949, earned a BA with honors in mathematics and general honors in 1952, and was a Research Assistant at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics in 1953. He then earned a MA in 1955 and a PhD in economics with distinction in 1956 from the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), where Carl Christ supervised his dissertation. Nerlove’s other teachers included Milton Friedman, Theodore Schultz, Ta-Chung Liu, Fritz Machlup, and Jacob Marschak.
Nerlove’s teaching career began in 1958 as a visiting lecturer then lecturer at JHU before he was appointed to his first professorship in 1959 at the University of Minnesota. From there, he made stops at Stanford (1960-1965), Yale University (1965-1969), Chicago (1969-1975), Northwestern University (1974-1982), and the University of Pennsylvania (1982-1993) before retiring from the University of Maryland (1993-2016). He also held many visiting appointments, including at Harvard University (1967-1968), four universities and research centers in Germany, the University of British Columbia (1971), Fundação Getulio Vargas in Brazil (1974-1978), and Australian National University (1982).
Nerlove’s employment history also includes federal service. He was an analytical statistician in the Agricultural Marketing Service at the US Department of Agriculture from 1956-1957, then a lieutenant in the US Army from 1957-1959. He was drafted in 1957, then on loan from the Chemical Corps to the (US) Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly as an economist at the request of Chairman Estes Kefauver in 1958. In addition, Nerlove consulted for the RAND Corporation (1959-1989), Southern Pacific Company (1961), (US) President’s Committee to Appraise Employment and Unemployment Statistics (1962), World Bank (1979-1985), and International Food Policy Research Institute (1981-1986).
Nerlove’s history of professional service includes the Econometric Society (President, 1981), American Economic Association (Executive Committee, 1977-1979), American Statistical Association (advisory committees to the Bureau of the Census, 1964-1969, and Civil Aeronautics Board, 1966-1968), International Economic Association (Chair, Econometrics Section, 1989), National Academy of Sciences (National Research Council Committee on Social Sciences in the NSF, 1975-1976), NSF (proposal reviewer, 1960-1974), and Social Sciences Research Council (Director, Mathematical Social Science Board Summer Workshop on Lags in Economic Behavior, 1970).
Nerlove’s awards include the 1969 John Bates Clark Medal, a Fulbright Research Grant (1962-1963), and two Guggenheim Fellowships (1962-1963; 1978-1979), and he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association (1993) and American Economic Association (2012).
Nerlove married Mary Ellen Lieberman (died 2011) in the 1950s and they had two daughters, Susan Nerlove (born circa 1958) and Miriam Nerlove (born circa 1960). Miriam Nerlove become an author and illustrator of children’s books, including Who Is David with Evelyn Nerlove in 1985. Marc and Mary Ellen Nerlove divorced in the 1970s, then he married Dr. Anke Meyer (born 1955), a German environmental economist who spent 23 years at the World Bank (1991-2014) and collaborated with him on some of his writings during this time.
Source: From the Marc L. Nerlove papers, 1930-2014 webpage, David M.Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
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Backstory for The Journal of Progressive Hedonists Against Radical Thought at the University of Chicago:
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2 replies on “Johns Hopkins. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, later University of Chicago professor. Marc Nerlove, 1933-2024”
Thank you for this article and for the new art of Roger Vaughan. I am his Ukrainian friend and the mother of his Ukrainian Goddaughter, whom he loved as his own kid. For the last 25 years of Roger’s life, he was a member of our family and lived with us in Kyiv for half of his time. Roger’s brother in the UK might have some of Roger’s archives from student times… I will ask him.
Please do, his work will have a special niche in the history of economics.