Jean-François Richard, Professor Emeritus
On January 1, 2022, former Distinguished University Professor Jean-François Richard retired after a 30-year career at Pitt. His legacy includes 80+ papers, two books, numerous other textbook series articles, and an outstanding record of PhD student advising, serving as main advisor for 16 students and as committee member for 60 others. He also served a director of graduate studies for 4 years and as department chair for 10 years.
Q: What do you like the most about economics?
A: Over my 50+ years career, I have been lucky to live through the golden age of the quantitative revolution in economics. I have witnessed extraordinary advances in economic theory, computing power, numerical methods and data availability that have revolutionized the way we can analyze an ever-growing number of critical economic issues, such as growth, recessions, unemployment, inflation, wealth distribution, development, financial series, collusion at auctions and procurements. There was considerable intellectual excitement supported by the leading economic journals that were open to new ideas, focusing on constructive suggestions and quick turnarounds.
Q: What were your greatest successes in your research career? Any paper you are especially proud of?
A: My greatest successes consisted of the development of concepts and numerical tools needed to analyze time series data sets, especially when critical variables are unobservable. Some examples I worked on with co-authors are money demand, non-linearities in GDP growth, tracking recessions, S&P500 volatility, currency crises in the 90’s, collusion at timber auctions, legal and economic impact of the “transplant” of legal systems (English, French or German) to other parts of the world, spatio-temporal distribution of severe crimes in Pittsburgh, seat belt usage (“buckle up”) and local taxation (Belgium).
I am proud of numerous co-authored papers with wonderful colleagues and friends (D.F. Hendry, J.P. Florens, M. Mouchart, R.C. Marshall, D. Berkowitz, D. DeJong, R. Liesenfeld) but, if I had one paper to single out, it would be “Exogeneity”, (with R.F. Engle and D.F. Hendry), Econometrica, 1983. In this paper, we introduce a key concept of (weak) exogeneity, defined as conditions that allow for the analysis of a set of variables Y (e.g., money) conditionally on a related set of “exogenous” variables (e.g., interest rate), that is without having to specify how the latter are generated. Our definition of exogeneity has since been widely adopted in the literature (2,700+ Google cites) and econometric textbooks.
Q: What are your best memories of research collaboration with other Pitt faculty?
A: I have fond memories of my research collaborations with John Kagel (risk aversion), Dan Berkowitz (the “transplant” effect) and Dave DeJong (GDP non-linearities and turning points), all of which have produced published co-authored papers. But I also had fruitful discussions with numerous colleagues, among whom Alvin Roth, Lise Vesterlund, Alistair Wilson, for occasional statistical advice, and Douglas Hanley, Marla Ripoll, and Daniele Coen-Pirani for lively discussions on Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models – which I don’t like!
Q: What was a satisfying experience you remember as a teacher?
A: I enjoyed teaching graduate advanced econometrics (time series), where I was trying to introduce my students to the concepts that were most directly relevant to applications (exogeneity, causality, encompassing, latent variables, filtering). But what I enjoyed most was dissertation supervision. I was lucky to supervise outstanding graduate students with whom I co-authored excellent research papers and most of whom are pursuing successful academic careers.
Q: What do you enjoy doing during retirement?
A: Foremost, enjoying and devoting more time to my family life. Otherwise, I am bicycling (100+ miles/week, weather permitting), re-organizing my model train and stamp collections, reading books, and watching TV series on science and history. I also watch the news (depressing) and sports (soccer, car racing, the Panthers, Steelers, and Penguins). Incidentally, I am still completing a couple of papers, one on collusion at timber auctions and the other on unemployment and inflation.