I have copied below the obituary for Seamus Hogan that I wrote for the current issue of Asymmetric Information, the NZAE's newsletter. It will eventually also be available here; look for the August 2015 edition.
Seamus
Davie Hogan, newly elected President of the New Zealand Association of
Economists, died of a brain aneurysm on 17 July, aged 53. He is survived by his
wife, Sarah, and their children, Emma, Liam and Flynn.
Seamus
was a Canterbury economist. Born and raised in Christchurch, Seamus completed
his undergraduate and Honours training in economics at Canterbury in 1985 and
there began his doctoral work under Richard Manning. When Manning left to Chair
the Economics Department at the State University of New York in Buffalo, Seamus
followed him and completed his doctorate in 1989. He then took up an Assistant
Professorship at McGill University in Quebec where, with co-author Chris Ragan,
he completed a series of papers modelling labour markets. More importantly, he
there met Sarah.
Seamus
advanced to Associate Professor at McGill before moving to Ottawa. There,
Seamus served as Principal Researcher with the Bank of Canada and as a research
unit Director with Health Canada, before moving to Canterbury where Seamus took
up a Senior Lectureship in 2001.
The
Economics Department was then building out of long slump. The Department, from
the 1980s through the mid-1990s, had been unable to hire to fill standing
vacancies. By 1995, the Department had dropped to seven economists plus two
fixed-term appointments. Rebuilding began slowly in 1996. With the hiring of
Seamus Hogan and Ken Carlaw in 2001, the Department had grown to twelve, though
there had been much turnover. Frank Tay’s history of the Economics Department
identifies the Department’s real turning point at 2001, with Les Oxley’s
appointment and Headship.
Seamus
provided support to Les Oxley’s Headship, and to John Gibson’s subsequent
Headship from 2005. Oxley ran the department as a participatory democracy with
strong roles for standing committees. Seamus’s long history with the
Department, his willingness to provide departmental and university service, and
his adept familiarity with the university’s regulatory arcana proved critical
to the Department’s strong performance in the 2000s. Seamus spent much time as
head of the Teaching Committee before his later term as Head of Department.
With
the Department having been able to improve its staffing complement, more mass-market
courses could be offered. Seamus helped to ensure the continuation of the
rigorous calculus-based intermediate microeconomics offering as the
intermediate course was split into honours-bound and majors-oriented streams,
and during the subsequent semesterisation of both courses. He also greatly
assisted the Department’s navigation through the Faculty’s creation of core
requirements in the Commerce degree.
Seamus
had been a student during the Department’s lean times in the early 1980s and
had maintained connections with the Department during its worse times in the
1990s. He consequently understood the importance of building a strong,
collegial environment. In his Headship, he continued the management tradition
established by Oxley.
For all
of his importance in ensuring a steady and foresighted hand on the Department’s
administrative tiller, Seamus will be most remembered at Canterbury for his
contributions to the teaching programme. Seamus taught the core calculus-based
intermediate microeconomics course during all but two years of his appointment
at Canterbury; while he was on sabbatical, his stand-ins, me and Andrea
Menclova, knew better than to deviate from the programme that Seamus had
established.
Nearly
every one of the 50 to 100 students annually taking the calculus-based
intermediate microeconomics course was taught by Seamus, and Seamus knew each
of them by name. He was more than generous with his time, offering
near-compulsory office hours and extensive course and programme advice in
addition to lectures and tutorials. Nobody could better help a student best
navigate the intricacies of double-degree or double major programmes. And he
actively supported the Economic Students’ Association.
Seamus
complemented his intermediate microeconomics offering with a graduate-level
course in welfare economics which produced a disproportionate number of the
junior economists later hired on at the Reserve Bank and Treasury. His graduate
elective course was taken by almost every honours student during the years it
was offered. Some especially perspicacious honours-bound students who
anticipated Seamus’s sabbatical leave would take his graduate offering while in
their third year to avoid missing out.
Seamus’s
courses embodied what seemed to be at the core of Canterbury economics. It
combined a rigorous technical approach with a focus on the economic intuitions
underpinning the modelling decisions. That, together with a strong appreciation
for the institutions within which markets operate and the moral presuppositions
underpinning welfare analysis, built a cohort of students of which Canterbury
can be exceedingly proud.
Seamus’s
enthusiasm for the students was irrepressible, and was reflected in a College
teaching award in 2011. It also played a role in his promotion to Associate
Professor. But it is better reflected in the tributes paid him by his students
at the memorial website established by his family.[1]
Seamus
loved economics and loved teaching economics to others, whether students or
colleagues. His interests were broad-ranging. Despite the department’s rather
disparate research interests, we all could, and did, seek Seamus’s advice on
our papers. Seamus’s lectures invited students to join in the fun inherent in
economics. It was impossible to know him and not share in it. When Seamus
provided us copies of his exams for proofreading, he was not really looking for
error correction – his errors were few. He was inviting us to share in the fun
he had created for the students. It was play.
When
the external review committee established to re-assess the Department in light
of post-earthquake budgetary pressures deemed, in 2014, that Seamus’s
intermediate microeconomic offerings were surplus to requirements, it hit
Seamus, me, our students, and many of our colleagues very hard. In prior eras,
budget constraints were accommodated by restricting course offerings to the
core theory fundamental to the training of new economists. This review instead
cut core theory while maintaining the less rigorous intermediate path.
Seamus’s
last year at Canterbury was not a happy one. I left the Department in July of
2014 to join the New Zealand Initiative, a Wellington-based think-tank. Seamus
left the Department at the end of the year and joined me in Wellington, taking
up a position as Senior Lecturer in the School of Government. The Economics
side of the Department of Economics and Finance at Canterbury currently stands
at nine, including two senior tutors. Before the earthquakes, we were twenty.
It is
particularly tragic that Seamus’s death came so soon after his family moved to
Wellington. Family was always especially important to Seamus, and that he had
imposed such a cost on them did not sit well with him. But it
is difficult to imagine Seamus existing far from the lecture whiteboard.
Seamus’s death came just as the Hogans had re-established themselves after a
particularly difficult year.
In
policy circles, Seamus was best known for his work in electricity market
regulation and for his blogging at Offsetting Behaviour, where he co-blogged
with me.[2] Outside
of academia, Seamus was best known for his work with his doctoral student Scott
Brooker in creating the Winning and Score Predictor, the WASP now well familiar
to cricket fans around the world. The WASP emerged from work Seamus and Scott
undertook for New Zealand Cricket to improve batting performance.
Seamus
was also well known in Christchurch music circles. While a student, Seamus
played with the Christchurch Symphony, as both of his parents had. He played
violin with the Resonance Ensemble under conductor Mark Hodgkinson. He also
served on the board of the Christchurch School of Music to assist during the
difficult post-earthquake period.
The
economics community will miss Seamus’s commitment to service, to scholarship
and to students. The Association has lost its President. And many of us have
also lost someone whose quiet advice made us better economists.
[2] A compendium of Seamus’s
posts is available here http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/a-hogan-compendium.html
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