Finance and economics | Free exchange

William Baumol, a great economist, died on May 4th

A prolific writer and originator of the idea of “cost disease”, he was 95

ON MAY 4th William Baumol, one of the great economists of the 20th century, died. Mr Baumol, who kept working into his 90s, published more than 500 papers across a dazzling array of topics; his best-known work, describing “cost disease”, was essentially a side-project. He was a scholar whose stray thought on a sleepless night could change how people see the world.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Embrace the contradictions”

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