Louis De Alessi is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Miami.
Fred and I met when he enrolled in my graduate course in Microeconomic Theory at George Washington University. The class was small, I used a Socratic approach, and Fred — as you would expect – was an active participant, asking good questions and making insightful comments. We began to get to know each other, and toward the end of the course he came to see me. He said that he had been intrigued by the range of interesting problems that economic theory could be used to explore, and was thinking of studying for the Ph.D. We discussed his interests and constraints, and it seemed to me that the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia would be a very good fit. I encouraged him to look into it, he did, and decided to go there. I was delighted. He was an outstanding student of great academic promise, and UVA was an excellent springboard.
In 1975 Henry Manne, a good friend, approached me about joining the Law & Economics Center at the University of Miami as co-director of the John M. Olin Fellowship Program. One of his inducements was that Fred was going to be one of the Fellows in the first class, and that helped me decide to accept the offer. When the LEC moved into its own building, Fred had the office directly across the hallway from mine, and we saw a lot of each other. Fred did extremely well in the LEC courses and seminars as well as in the UM School of Law, where he made law review and graduated at the top of his class.
Fred and I became good friends. He inevitably had a good story to tell – usually the long version – and time spent with him was always entertaining and informative. We had other interests in common besides economics, including history and — during his stint at LEC — sailing. He and three colleagues owned an O’Day Daysailer that they docked at our house and used to explore Biscayne Bay and its keys, and occasionally our boats crossed paths.
Fred was thoughtful and kind. He and Tim Muris used to spend an occasional Spring weekend making a tour of baseball Spring training camps in Florida. One weekend they took along my son Michael, a 9-year old baseball fan. Michael had a marvelous time, and my wife Helen and I were deeply appreciative.
After Fred graduated from law school, I followed his career with great interest and I was delighted that he fulfilled his promise. We corresponded, and we met at conferences, meetings, and similar events. We were members of many of the same professional organizations and we had a lot of friends in common, so it was easy and rewarding to keep in touch. We exchanged reprints and I contributed a chapter to the book on antitrust that he co-edited with William Shughart. For a time I taught a few days a year in a master’s program in Napoli, Italy, and in 1992 I asked Fred to teach a segment on law. We overlapped, and Fred – with his usual flair – opened his first lecture in Italian. The next day he joined my wife and me in Roma, and we spent a day or two wending our way to Torino, where he stayed with us for a couple of days. He was bright, cheerful, witty, and a great companion.
When Fred returned to the University of Miami School of Law, first on a visiting basis and then as a chair professor, I was utterly pleased. We began to meet periodically for mid-morning coffee (Fred always had a banana as well) at a Starbucks with an outdoor patio and spend an hour or two chatting. As usual, he was bubbling with research and writing ideas and travel plans. Life here was good to him for a while. Then a close friend died suddenly of cancer and not too long afterwards his own health began to deteriorate.
The last time we met he did not look well and was quite subdued. I thought it was just a temporary setback, and he certainly seemed to think so. Even after his family moved him to the Washington, DC area for better care, I expected him to recover, as he had before. His demise was a shock.
Fred had a long and brilliant career. It spanned legal practice with a major law firm, an influential position at the Federal Trade Commission, and a series of distinguished academic appointments. Those in the profession will remember him for his many research contributions as a leading scholar in law and economics. His friends will also remember him for his good humor, warmth, and erudition. We had been friends for some forty-five years, and I will miss him.
He loved his family, and it is comforting that he was with them at the end.