Prof. Mark Perlman

Obituary: Mark Perlman / Prominent economist of post-World War II era

Dec. 23, 1923 - May 3, 2006

Sunday, May 07, 2006

By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mark Perlman in 2005

"Pillars of Economic Understanding," the title of a textbook published not long ago, might as well be the epitaph of the man who helped to write it. Mark Perlman, a former University of Pittsburgh professor, was a pillar among the nation's economics editors and, say his students and colleagues, was one of the most prominent economists of the post-World War II era.

Mr. Perlman died Wednesday in Shadyside. He was 82. Before his death, he lived in Fox Chapel for two years, and Oakland for decades before that.

For all of his books and accolades, he is best remembered by his thousands of students as a professor who took the idea of teaching seriously, a notion that is sometimes lost at larger schools where research and scholarly publication is paramount.

"He was the prototype of a professor," quick-witted and always wearing a bow-tie, said former student Morgan Marietta.

"He's the reason that I became a professor myself."

He lavished individual attention upon many of his students -- something they weren't always used to at a large public school -- inviting them over to dinner and happy to write reference letter after reference letter for those applying to graduate school.

"He was the first [professor] who ever asked me where my father went to school, what my religion was," said former student Robert Holzbach. "Not for gossip, but to get to know me."

Mr. Perlman taught at Cornell and Johns Hopkins, but he made a home at Pitt, where he taught for three decades before retiring a dozen years ago. Early in his career, he developed an expertise in labor economics, penning books such as "The Machinists" and "Labor Union Theories in America." That niche proficiency evolved into a broader expertise in the history of economic thought.

He put that breadth of knowledge to use not only as a teacher, but also as the founding editor of the "Journal of Economic Literature," a leading journal in its genre. He edited that journal from 1969 through 1980. His influence was so wide that, in 2002, a group of colleagues published a text called "Editing Economics: Essays in Honour of Mark Perlman" -- the written equivalent of a tribute album.

Economics was a family affair, both by birth and by marriage. His father was Selig Perlman, a Polish-born labor economist who immigrated to the U.S. in 1918 and taught at the University of Wisconsin. Mr. Perlman married Naomi Waxman, an economist for the young United Nations.

Their only child, Abigail Perlman Williams, now living in Boston, said her father was a dedicated husband, something that has become particularly evident over the last few years. During that period, Mr. Perlman's wife has been hospitalized, suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

"He visited her every day," Mrs. Williams said, up until he fell ill himself, diagnosed with cancer a few months ago.

Mr. Perlman is survived by his wife and only child, as well as four grandchildren. Services start at 9 a.m. Tuesday at Ralph Schugar Chapel in Shadyside.

Home > News > Obituaries

Professor Mark Perlman

Historian of economic thought

Monday, 12 June 2006

Mark Perlman, economist: born Madison, Wisconsin 23 December 1923; Professor of Economics, University of Pittsburgh 1963-93 (Emeritus); Editor, Journal of Economic Literature 1969-81; Co-Editor, Journal of Evolutionary Economics 1991-96; married 1953 Naomi Waxman (one daughter); died Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 3 May 2006.

Mark Perlman was an influential historian of economic thought, the co-author with Charles McCann Jnr of The Pillars of Economic Understanding - the first volume published under the subtitle "Ideas and Traditions" (1998), the second as "Factors and Markets" (2000). He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Economic Literature, a leader in its genre, and created a journal for the US Department of State, Portfolio on International Economic Perspectives, as well as a journal for the Schumpeter Society, the Journal of Evolutionary Economics.

His first speciality had been labour economics. His doctoral dissertation on labour arbitration in Australia, published as Judges in Industry (1954), is still much cited, second only in importance to A New Province for Law and Order (1922), the articles of Henry Bournes Higgins, the judge who drafted the early law. Perlman's later work on the subject included Labor Union Theories in America: background and development (1958) and The Machinists: a new study in American trade Unionism (1961).

Mark Perlman was born in 1923 in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Selig Perlman, a Polish émigré and himself a distinguished labour historian at the University of Wisconsin. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1947, Mark took his PhD at Columbia University in 1950. He first taught at Cornell and Johns Hopkins universities before being appointed to a permanent professorship at the University of Pittsburgh in 1963, a post that he occupied for three decades.

It was fascinating to listen to him discourse about his upbringing in a highly intellectual household, of having met, as a young boy, Albert Einstein and other academic luminaries. Most of the great economists and many of the leading historians and philosophers of the 20th century were known to him. He brought this breadth of outlook to his teaching, preferring to provide undergraduates with broad-based instruction in the liberal arts before proceeding to the discipline of economics. His autobiographical essay, "What Makes My Mind Tick", in his selected essays, The Character of Economic Thought, Economic Characters, and Economic Institutions (1996), is particularly stimulating.

Perlman was a great anglophile, who often talked of his rewarding period as an official faculty visitor and visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1976-77. He and his wife Naomi delighted to entertain their English friends and colleagues at the Athenaeum Club in London during their frequent visits to the UK. For many years Perlman was a much-appreciated co-editor of the Cambridge University Surveys of Economic Literature (1977-96) and the Cambridge Surveys in Economic Politics and Institutions (1991-95).

His discovery of the English economist G.L.S. Shackle was almost serendipitous, and he did his bit to expand Shackle's influence by publishing papers by and on him and substantial reviews of his books in the Journal of Economic Literature. In May 2004 he delivered the G.L.S. Shackle Centenary Lecture, "Memorialising George L.S. Shackle: a centennial tribute", at St Edmund's College, Cambridge.

In 2002 Perlman was himself memorialised with a Festschrift, Editing Economics, edited by Hank Lim, Ungsuh K. Park and G.C. Harcourt, to which 18 scholars contributed.

Mark Perlman was a deeply religious man and a prominent member of the Jewish community in his home town. The core of his thinking was a religious conviction that it is the tribe (the people), not the individual, that comes before the Almighty.

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