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Bill Baumol, one of the stars of the economics profession, died today at age 95. I think it’s a travesty that the Nobel committee never got its act together enough to give him the Nobel prize in economics.

Bill co-authored, with the late Sue Ann Batey Blackman, the article “Natural Resources” in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Coincidentally, I gave a talk last Friday in which I drew on that article and had the idea of updating it.

Here’s my story about an important interaction I had with him in 1980. I didn’t mention it in the telling–I should have–but he was very pleasant and encouraging.