From Richard Grossman on the occasion of RAM's 90th birthday

 To Dick Miller on his 90th birthday

Happy Birthday, Dick!

Dick was one of the first people I met at Wesleyan. I think he was on the recruiting team that interviewed me at the American Economics Association meetings when I was on the job market. I do remember that the dinner I had on my fly-out visit to Wesleyan was at Dick and Joan’s house. I had been on many fly-outs and attended many recruiting dinners during the course of my job search, but that visit to Dick and Joan’s was the first—and only—dinner that actually took place in someone’s home.

What a welcoming home it was! After I arrived at Wesleyan, Dick and Joan had me over to dinner onmultiple occasions. I am relatively certain that they thought, as a single man who had just arrived from Washington, that I needed some looking after—well, at least Joan did (she was right, of course). She always asked how my social life was going, and was always ready with encouraging words when the news was not good. Joan, knowing that I keep kosher, was always concerned that I would be able to eat in her home. I cannot recall anyone else in Middletown who was as nice to--or as concerned about me. 

Ruth and I were very happy to have them at our wedding, now more than 20 years ago.

Dick, of course, impressed me on a regular basis. Very early on in my time at Wesleyan, I had a chance to go to Cambridge and New Haven with Dick to interview job candidates. I do not recall how Dick got this assignment, or how I managed to go with him, but I remember that we spent a day or  twointerviewing job candidates back-to-back-to-back. After a few hours, I was finished. I could not care less about the job candidates or their PhD theses or if we ever hired another economist--ever. Dick,  incontrast, was just warming up. He seemed to know and understand their research better than they did -- even when it was not his field. He would constantly push them to tell him more (all I wanted was for them to stop). I have never met anyone with such a high tolerance of, or interest in, such a wide array of topics in economics.

Dick’s field of specialization is industrial organization (IO). I am an economic historian, almost completely ignorant of industrial organization. At some point, I was writing about the declining number of banks in Britain during the 19th and early 20th centuries and so figured that I should learn a little bit about IO, and wondered if the decline in the number of banks meant that they began to act more like amonopoly. I did some standard IO tests...and nothing came out the way theory suggested that it should. I mean—NOTHING. I remember bringing my results (OK, bringing my results in a panic) to Dick, absolutely convinced that I had no chance of finishing the paper. Dick was completely unsurprised that I had found nothing. He then told me: (a) what I should do; and (b) exactly what the results would show. He was completely right. At the time, I remember being incredibly grateful—now, after some years, I am a bit annoyed that he knew more about my paper than I did.

When I last I saw him (pre-pandemic), Dick was, as ever, engaged with scholarly work. He shared with me his recent ideas on capital budgeting under uncertainty, net present value, and David Ricardo’s theory of profit as expressed in the different editions of his On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. 

On these and other projects, I have a feeling that I have learned a lot more from Dick Miller than he has from me. I am hopeful that when the pandemic subsides, Dick and I can pick up right where we left off.  For the curious among you, I had used 4-firm (and 5, 6, 7, and 8-firm) concentration ratios. Dick said to use shares of the top eight banks individually...and he can finally explain to me what happened between the second and third editions of Ricardo’s Principles!

We Jews have a tradition of wishing someone both health and long life by saying, “May you live until 120.” One of the reasons for this blessing is because Moses is said to have lived until 120, at which age “...his eye had not dimmed, and his vigor had not diminished.”

To Dick on your 90th birthday, I can think of no more appropriate wish than: “Until 120!”

Richard Grossman

February 10, 2021