If there is such a person as a universally respected and universally loved scholar, Professor Arrow was such a man. I have been trying to think of what I might write to pay tribute to him that somebody else could not say better.  I will give it a shot, though I am not qualified to do this task full justice.

Prof. Arrow was a great genius whose work will be spoken about for as long as economics remains a subject of interest. But I am sure that other economists, even someone who did not know him personally, could do an excellent job of recounting his genius. At the very least, Prof. Arrow’s impossibility theorem and his groundbreaking work on general equilibrium models will be part of the standard curriculum of economics, I believe forever. He had an incredibly wide-ranging curiosity, which led him to work that has revolutionized many empirical fields, including my field of health economics.

Let me focus instead on Prof. Arrow’s reputation for being a kind and humble man, about which I can give some specifics. The main thing I have to say about this is that his reputation was well deserved. There are many stories I could tell, but I’ll just tell one here.

In 1989, during the fall of my senior year in college, Prof. Arrow offered a class on economic inequality for undergraduate economics majors. To my surprise, the class was not oversubscribed, and so I signed up. Prof. Arrow was quietly brilliant the whole quarter. In his hands, the economics of inequality touched on an astonishing array of topics, and to this day, I cannot think about the subject except with the framework he presented there.

He was not an outstanding speaker – there was nothing flashy about his style, but there was nothing false either. His aim as a teacher was to focus his students on the material, not himself. Even when he presented his impossibility theorem, I do not remember him saying that it was his theorem.

The next part is embarrassing. The impossibility theorem says, very roughly, that in a society where there is broad disagreement about social policy, democratic processes can produce incoherent social outcomes. When Prof. Arrow taught it in the class, however, I misunderstood and thought the theorem said that democratic processes always lead to incoherent social outcomes. That evening, I found an easy – too easy! – counter-example to the incorrectly understood theorem. So I scheduled a time to go meet with Prof. Arrow to see where I had gone astray.

When we met, Prof. Arrow was very kind as he explained my error. He even apologized for being unclear in his explanation, even though I am sure most of the rest of the class had it right.

He spent the bulk of the time that day trying to find out what I wanted to do with my life. When I told him I wanted to be a doctor and not an economist, he seemed disappointed (this genuinely surprised me) and he encouraged me to think some more about it. That meeting led me for the first time to think really seriously about a career as an economist. That brief meeting with Prof. Arrow changed my life.

It is easy to be sad when someone of Prof. Arrow’s character and genius dies. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know him. I will always count his touch on my life a blessing from God and I will miss him.

When drug prices go up, does demand decrease? Not necessarily said Maria Polyakova, a professor of health research and policy and Stanford Health Policy core faculty member. In her study, "Out of Pocket Cost and Utilization of Healthcare among Elderly and Pre-elderly Adults," Polyakova used data from Medicare Part D — the prescription drug branch of Medicare, covered by private insurance companies — to determine how older people respond to price changes. In her preliminary findings, Polyakova discovered that people with acute conditions were less likely than patients with chronic conditions to change their drug usage when prices increased.

As the leading cause of death for young people in the United States, traffic accidents are a major risk to health. Around the world, they kill 1.3 million people per year and seriously injure more than 80 million. David Studdert, a professor of medicine and law and a Stanford Health Policy core faculty member, wanted to bring those numbers down. In his study, "Exploring the relationship between traffic citation history and crash risk among elderly drivers in Florida," Studdert looked for a way to find high-risk drivers based on demographics and driving records. He found that drivers who have a quick succession of traffic violations or have particular types of violations may be at a higher risk to cause serious accidents. Studdert hopes to use the study's results to make driving safer without encroaching on civil liberties.

Kathryn Stoner, CDDRL/FSI Senior Fellow, discusses the integrity of the new administration together with David Sanger, national security correspondent, and John Rizzo, former CIA chief legal officer. Listen here.

The Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the Stanford Global Projects Center and Common Good hosted the “Renewing American Infrastructure” Roundtable 

The roundtable brought together senior leaders and policymakers from the public and private sectors and academia to Stanford for a two-day workshop. Attendees discussed federal policy reforms to accelerate and enhance the development and redevelopment of critical economic and social infrastructure in the United States, with a focus on maximizing the public benefit of new federal spending and institutional reforms to streamline investment at the federal, state and local levels.  

In an op-ed for The Diplomat, Stanford assistant professor Phillip Y. Lipscy says the Trump presidency offers Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an opportunity to realize his vision of a more prominent Japan, yet the depth of the bilateral relationship and ability to deliver hinge on how much the two leaders can compromise on economic and security interests.

Read the piece here.