Ron McKinnon, the Stanford University economist who specialized in international finance, has died. According to his colleague John Shoven, Ron “fell on an escalator at SFO about twelve days ago and was badly injured.”

I didn’t know Ron well but I still remember his warm welcome when I was new to the Bay Area. I had just moved to San Francisco in 1979 to work at the Cato Institute. I got invited, I think by Tom Borcherding, to “Canadian economist night.” That’s my term, but it’s reasonably accurate. Ron was a Canadian who was a permanent U.S. resident. At the time, I was too. (I’ve since become an American.) The “twinkle in his eye” that John Shoven noted was one of the main things I remember about Ron.

Tom Borcherding had wanted to get together all the economists in the area who were Canadian or had some connection to Canada. Tom, an American, was visiting at the Hoover Institution and was on the faculty of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Tom died earlier this year.