I’m saddened to learn of the death of the economist Robert “Bobby” McCormick. Bobby earned his PhD in economics from Texas A&M and was on the economics faculty at Clemson University when I taught there, 1992-1997. Bobby later served as Dean of Clemson’s College of Business. (When Karol and I moved to Clemson in the summer of 1992, the townhouse that we were renting wasn’t ready. Bobby very generously offered to let us live in his beautiful home – in Liberty, SC – free of charge for that month while he and his wife were staying with family in upstate New York. We took him up on the offer.)
Bobby was a first-rate economist, and co-author (with the late Bob Tollison) of one of my favorite public-choice books, the 1981 Politicians, Legislation, and the Economy: An Inquiry Into the Interest-Group Theory of Government. Quite prolific, among the many other things that Bobby wrote or co-wrote is an insightful 1988 Journal of Law & Economics paper, co-authored with my friend Roger Meiners, titled “University Governance: A Property Rights Perspective.”
The world has too few excellent economists. With the death a few weeks ago of my thesis advisor Bob Ekelund and now with Bobby’s death, it’s lost two of these in the past month.
