Chris A. Sims Remembrance
In other forums, I have written about Chris’s impressive array of research contributions. In addition to his stellar scholarship, Chris had an enormous impact in nurturing young scholars, including many, like me, who were his students. As I cannot possibly speak to his across-the-board impact in supporting so many others, I will instead speak from my own personal perspective.
I often say that when I got to graduate school, I was lucky to have learned from the young Chris Sims. When I arrived at the University of Minnesota, he was quickly establishing himself as a prominent scholar with his own unique perspective, and I got to witness this emergence. As I was an intellectual neophyte in both economics and statistics when I arrived at graduate school, I learned the value of having both a deep understanding of existing research and a willingness to push the boundaries in important new ways. It was truly exciting to witness the research advances in economics being pursued at the University of Minnesota at the time. Chris was a big contributor to this success.
As a graduate student, I was lucky to be Chris’s research assistant for his most prominent paper, entitled “Macroeconomics and Reality,” and this was despite my rather limited programming skills. I would bring in seemingly complicated computer output and watch Chris quickly digest it. Then, a day or two later, I would sheepishly arrive, confessing to a computer bug, and Chris would, on the spot, provide a new and presumably better explanation of the findings. I was frankly in awe witnessing this real-time analysis.
I recall Chris as a self-confident teacher who would even sometimes come to class with notes scribbled around the outside of a Styrofoam coffee cup. Back in college, I remember well that my best teacher said that, generally, he did not want to give us complete clarity of results; otherwise, we would leave class and not think more about the material. This was never a problem in Chris’s classes! (His lectures were at times incomplete and maybe a bit impressionistic.) But I learned an enormous amount from having to think hard about the frontier material he presented, with characteristic depth and his own fresh perspective. It was a truly great learning experience for me, and it very much helped to shape my thinking throughout my professional career.
During and since my time in graduate school, Chris served as a mentor, but in his own unique way. Participating in this event made me ask myself what it means to be a successful mentor. I concluded that there are multiple complementary dimensions to this. Chris’s example as a stellar scholar is one aspect, but that is only a small part of his influence on me. He was pleased to acknowledge and participate in some of my own professional successes, something that I truly appreciated.
But Chris was not one to hand out a lot of pats on the back or direct compliments. Pats on the back, however, can have short half-lives. Instead, Chris made, at times, highly critical comments on my research. Such comments were not always fun to receive, and I did not agree with all aspects of them. But some had remarkably durable impacts, making me rethink my own research and add different and valuable dimensions that I had not previously considered. This was Chris’s substitute for, or perhaps his version of, flattery: his willingness to make deep probes into the research questions I tackled and to offer his own valuable, albeit critical, perspectives. This might have been his most important contribution as a mentor. I will always be appreciative of this part of my interactions with Chris.
Chris’s overall impact on my professional career is immeasurable, and I was indeed lucky to have had him both as a teacher and a mentor.
Lars Peter Hansen