I was saddened this weekend to hear that David Colander, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Middlebury College, passed away in the first week of December last year. I didn't know David well, but some ten years ago he and I, along with Mary Hedges, guest edited an issue of New Zealand Economic Papers on innovation in teaching undergraduate economics. We co-wrote the editorial, although David was generous in crediting Mary and I for carrying much of the workload towards the end (if I remember correctly, he was on safari at the time we were writing the editorial).
Aside from co-editing, it was within the broader context of economics teaching that I interacted with David, albeit infrequently. He was Associate Editor of Content for the Journal of Economic Education for a number of years, and alongside being a generous mentor to many authors and students, was the author of an excellent introductory economics text. Although I never assigned that textbook in my classes, I did make use of a number of bits from it. This included, on the first day of teaching my ECONS101 and ECONS102 classes, presenting David's definition of economics (alongside several others). David's definition immediately set his textbook apart from the rest of the field:
Economics is the study of how human beings coordinate their wants and desires, given the decision-making mechanisms, social customs, and political realities of the society.
The focus on embedding economics within a social system was emblematic of how David saw things, at least from my interactions with him. David was also well-known for his contributions to the history of economic thought (an area with which I admittedly don't have great familiarity).
Middlebury College has an excellent obituary, that does much more than I ever could to capture how much David meant to the economics community and his colleagues and students. He will be missed.
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