As many Truth on the Market readers likely know, law and economics scholar, Fred McChesney, passed away last month. As we prepare to lay Fred to rest later this week, I have asked some of Fred’s friends and colleagues to contribute their thoughts about Fred’s life, and his influence as a scholar and as a friend. Over the next few days we will post those remembrances on the main page (and they will be collected here).
Fred was a lifelong friend, mentor, and intellectual influence — to me, as to so many others. I first met Fred when I was something like four years old, and he has been a significant influence in my life ever since. Like many others, I came to know Fred through my father, Henry Manne, who invited Fred to become one of the first Olin Fellows at the nascent Law and Economics Center at the University of Miami. Whatever his professional success in that role, in those early years he was to me a source of education about good music and a respite from the boredom of the interminable professional gatherings of various LEC events.
Later, as my interests and my career brought me further within Fred’s orbit, he graciously advised me on my studies and my career, and provided his insightful thoughts on my scholarship. Still later, he unhesitatingly agreed to serve as one of the initial members of the board of directors of the International Center for Law & Economics, and, unlike some other members of the board who thoughtlessly saw fit to take government jobs (you know who you are…), served on the board without interruption until his death.
As others will recount, his scholarship was incredibly influential. It was Fred who explained that rent seeking is a two-way street, and that the price and quantity of political influence is not just some abstract function of what would-be influencers want from the government, but of what politicians and regulators provide — or threaten to impose. Many a critic of crony capitalism will unflinchingly lay blame at the capitalists’ feet, without understanding that there would be little worth influencing if politicians didn’t strategically manipulate the supply of regulation, extracting “money for nothing” simply to forbear from cynically exercising their power to impose regulatory costs. Yet, ignorant of this dynamic — even, remarkably, in the Age of Trump — self-appointed protectors of the public interest go on advocating that the government have more and more authority in order, ostensibly, to combat the unseemly power of private enterprise — without ever seeing that the cure can actually cause the disease. If only they read — and understood — Fred McChesney….
And Fred was a titan of antitrust and consumer protection law and economics. His contributions to these areas are legion, and they have influenced all of us in the fields — whether we know it or not. Among many others are his articles bringing key economic insights to bear on issues like the faulty (or absent) assessment of materiality in the FTC’s deception actions, the faulty assumption of consumer benefit from the FTC’s Funeral Rule (and other disclosure-based regulations), and the influence of special interests on FTC merger enforcement decisions. His edited volume with Bill Shughart, The Causes and Consequences of Antitrust: The Public-Choice Perspective, and his antitrust casebook with Charlie Goetz (and later TOTM’s own Thom Lambert) are among the standards in the field.
And maybe most important of all, Fred edited the Liberty Fund’s three-volume collection of Henry Manne’s papers and conducted its excellent “Intellectual Portraits” series interview with my dad, as well.
The worlds of public choice, antitrust, consumer protection, and much else have lost a great scholar. And many of us have lost a great friend.
In addition to the encomiums that will appear here, readers should read the wonderful remembrance of Fred by his friend and co-author, Bill Shughart. Also worthwhile are the obituaries in the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, and the University of Miami’s tribute to Fred. A remembrance by David Henderson also highlights some of Fred’s best insights.
