First mentioned by Brad DeLong, it is now confirmed by Wikipedia. Here is an obituary, and another from UCLA. Clower is well known for rethinking the microfoundations of macroeconomics, assigning a primary role to money as a medium of exchange and the double coincidence of wants, liquidity constraints, and emphasizing the coordination problems behind Keynesian economics. He showed how a lot of Keynesian concepts made microeconomic sense, even without invoking the macro notion of aggregate demand or IS-LM analysis. He opposed what is now called “hydraulic Keynesianism” and was a wise man for doing so.
He was part of the UCLA department in its glory years and for several years in the early to mid 1980s he was the main editor of the American Economic Review, the flagship journal of the profession. During those years, he favored and published many unorthodox economists, often disgruntling the more mainstream members of the economics profession. He was good to me.
Here is Clower on whether economic theory is an inductive science (pdf), and Clower on axiomatics (pdf). Here is his famous paper with Leijonhufvud on Keynes and coordination (pdf). Here is his famous paper with Howitt on the microfoundations of monetary theory (pdf). For a full view of his work, you need to search scholar.google.com for both “Robert Clower” and “Robert W. Clower.”
I must admit that I don’t have comprehensive knowledge of the figures in economic academia yet, but I do know of Clower. The issues of inductive/deductive logic and “axiomatic” (presumptive) theory have been contentious for me recently and I appreciate the links. Here is a bit on the same topics I put together recently:
Falsifiability, Popper, Marx and Mises
There is nothing in science that we should take for granted, especially the imperfection of our tools and theories. Any potential problems with our tools in the study of nature are exacerbated by a narrow focus on deductive logic or axiomatic concepts, which have both been endemic to Popperian / Austrian theories.
Somebody badger Russ Roberts to have Axel Leijonhufvud on EconTalk before the latter kicks the bucket. I’ve only heard references to Clower-Leijonhufvud’s theory, without a clear explanation of what it is.
Tyler,
Here is another obiturary
http://www.econ.ucla.edu/clower/
I took a graduate micoeconomics course from Robert Clower at Northwestern in 1965. All a I remember now is his insistence that we attend a lecture by John Hicks and what a unpretencious and pleasant man he was. He also patronized my father’s favorite haunt, Lemoie’s Hardware in Evanston.
My first paper was one published by Clower in 1978 in Economic Inquiry when he was editing it.
The reductio ad absurdum of your argument would be that we either end up with a one world government in the face of continued bank mergers,
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