|
April 16, 2008
To the Penn community,
It is with deep sadness that I inform you that, after a long
illness, Professor David Cass recently passed away. He was found at his home on Tuesday, April
15, 2008. Our thoughts are with his family.
Dave has been an important figure in the department and the
profession for many years. He was born
in Honolulu in 1937, graduated from the University of Oregon in 1958, and
received his doctorate from Stanford in 1965. He was a member of the Economics department and the Cowles Foundation
at Yale University from 1965 to 1970, and Carnegie Mellon from 1970 to 1974. He has been at the University of
Pennsylvania
since 1974, and was named the Paul F. and E. Warren Shafer Miller Professor
of Economics in 1988.
Dave was an extraordinary scholar and an extraordinarily
generous man. He made singular
contributions to economic theory, including the introduction of the "Cass-Koopmans"
growth model, the discovery of the "Cass" criterion for Pareto efficiency in overlapping
generations models. With Karl Shell, he discovered the importance of extrinsic uncertainty (sunspots)
in economic dynamics. His work with many
coauthors on incomplete financial markets was extremely influential.
He has received many honors. Most significantly, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American
Economic Association in 1999 (the Association's description of his
accomplishments can be found here) and elected a fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences in 2003.
However, I know that he was particularly proud of his
achievements as a teacher. For as long
as I remember, he has been a cornerstone of the graduate program at Penn. Not only has he advised many outstanding
graduate students, his teaching in the first year general equilibrium course
was inspiring. All of the Penn graduate
students (both theorists and not) felt a rare loyalty and connection to Dave.
The timing is bitter
sweet. Dave had spent much of the spring
organizing the 4th Annual CARESS-Cowles Conference on Equilibrium Theory and Its Applications, to be
held at Penn this weekend. After much soul searching,
the remaining organizers decided that Dave would have wanted to the conference
to go on.
The department is establishing a fund in Dave's memory for
the benefit of graduate education.
George J. Mailath
Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences
Professor and Chair, Department of Economics
|
