Distinguished Fellow: In Honor of Victor Fuchs

Victor Fuchs is a towering figure. His contributions to economics have spanned nearly 35 years. As his career has progressed, he has increasingly come to write on subjects of broad interest in a style that is accessible to noneconomists, thereby magnifying his influence. His gift is an ability to ask questions that are usually based on simple theory, but which nonetheless in his hands seem novel, and then proceed to answer those questions with simple, straightforward data analysis that is all the more powerful for its simplicity. Victor's work is usually “low tech,” to use his term, but almost always persuasive in ways that high-tech methods would not necessarily be. In this essay, I focus principally on Victor's contributions to the economics of health and medical care, but I have a bit to say about his other contributions as well.