William Baumol, a great economist, died on May 4th
A prolific writer and originator of the idea of “cost disease”, he was 95
![](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20170513_FND000_0.jpg)
ON MAY 4th William Baumol, one of the great economists of the 20th century, died. Mr Baumol, who kept working into his 90s, published more than 500 papers across a dazzling array of topics; his best-known work, describing “cost disease”, was essentially a side-project. He was a scholar whose stray thought on a sleepless night could change how people see the world.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Embrace the contradictions”
Finance & economics May 13th 2017
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- The investment- management industry faces a big squeeze
- The EU ponders moving euro clearing from London after Brexit
- Africa’s informal economy is receding faster than Latin America’s
- In China, a TV soap on corruption attracts a mass following
- A new sort of hedge fund relies on crowd-sourcing
- William Baumol, a great economist, died on May 4th
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