More Details Emerge on GMU Economics Upheaval

Midas Oracle has more details on the news that most of GMU's Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES), led by Nobel laureate Vernon Smith, is moving to California. Apparently Smith might retain some kind of affiliation with GMU, while still basically moving to Chapman University. His colleague David Porter is moving now; Stephen Rassenti and Bart Wilson are moving in a year's time; and Kevin McCabe, Daniel Houser and Mark Olson are staying at GMU.

The news here is that Olson is staying: the impression given by Richard Wagner's letter was that Olson would be leaving, with only McCabe and Houser remaining.

It also seems that Daniele Struppa, the chancellor of Chapman University, has now poached Smith and his team twice. Struppa was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at GMU when Smith arrived, with colleagues in tow, from Arizona University in 2002 – the event that precipitated the founding of ICES.

Whether any of this is connected in any way to Richard Florida's departure from GMU is unclear. Midas Oracle is reporting that "the ICES folks have had a tenuous relationship at best with many members of the economics faculty," but as commenter Eric Crampton points out on yesterday's blog entry, Florida wasn't even part of the economics faculty to begin with.

The most intriguing part of the Midas Oracle post is where it mentions, in parentheses, that Robin Hanson got on well with the ICES team. How happy will Hanson be at GMU with his interdisciplinary approach to economics, now that Smith and his team have left?

It's also worth noting that Smith's departure from GMU doesn't necessarily reflect badly on GMU, so much as reflect a standard m.o. for Smith. Check out Smith's Wikipedia entry: he was at Stanford for one year, Brown for one year, the University of Massachusetts for four years, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for one year, and Caltech for one year. Only then did he seem to settle down at the University of Arizona for 26 years, before moving on again to GMU for what turned out to be five years. And given that the man is now 80 years old, it's not clear how long he'll be working at Chapman, either.