Louis Maccini, a professor of Economics at Hopkins since 1969, will be leaving Hopkins at the end of this semester. He received a standing ovation at the end of his last ever lecture, Macroeconomic Theory, yesterday. Maccini will be officially retiring at the end of the academic year, but he will be on leave for his last semester.
“He will be moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan in January, but will be coming back to our campus on regular visits next spring, despite being on Leave,” Robert Moffit, Department Chair and Professor of Economics, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Maccini arrived at Hopkins as an Assistant Professor of Economics after earning his Ph.D. at Northwestern University. Maccini went on to become an Associate Professor of Economics in 1975, and then a Professor of Economics since 1986. Maccini became Chair of the Economics Department in July of 1992 and held this position until June 2007.
“He was the department chair for fifteen years, which is longer than most humans can stand a position like that,” Laurence Ball, Professor of Economics, said. “Academic departments can be like kindergarten with the amount of bickering that goes on. But everyone trusted him as a straight shooter, so we worked together effectively.”
In 2000, Maccini was named Chair of the Economics Section of the International Society for Inventory Research. Also, in 2000, Maccini spearheaded the creation of the Center for Financial Economics, which has allowed for greater support of research and education in this area at the undergraduate level and had led to endowed professorships.
Maccini played a key role in expanding the Economics Department to include a Financial Economics major, Ball noted.
Maccini has been responsible for countless students’ first impressions of economics through his course on Elements of Macroeconomics. With 432 available seats, this course is one of the largest and most entrenched courses at Hopkins. It is a requisite course for both Economics and International Studies majors, and many non-majors take the course to gain a cursory understanding of the U.S. economy.
“I took the course because I wanted a basic understanding of economics, and Maccini’s lectures provided me with that,” sophomore Jenna Santoro, an Art History major who took the course last year, said. “His lectures were engaging and easy to follow.”
Junior Dana Berlin, an Economics major, also learned a great deal from the course.
“Professor Maccini provided me with my first exposure to how the Fed impacts the economy, which has been so crucial to understand in my subsequent courses,” Berlin wrote. “He had a true passion for the Fed’s policies and for enabling us to understand whatcwas going on in the current macroeconomic environment.”
Maccini has also taught Macroeconomic Theory, a 600-level course.
Maccini’s contributions to Hopkins are significant and numerous.
“I think it was Dean Newman who said nobody in the faculty has done so many things for so many students,” Ball said.
Ball explained that Maccini was responsible for building up the department in a number of ways, namely by hiring much of the current faculty during a time when the department was down in size and strength due to a large number of retirements in close succession.
Moreover, Maccini is devoted to his teaching.
“I think it’s a fact that he has saved every one of his grades for every class,” Ball wrote, “So if he wanted to look up one of his students from 1970, he could.”
Beyond the Hopkins community Maccini has continued to do remarkable work in the field of economics.
He is the recipient of a number of research grants and honors. In 2004, Maccini was elected to be a fellow of the International Society for Inventory Research.
“He is best known for his research on inventory movements,” Ball said.
Maccini has worked to develop theoretical models of inventory behavior that form the basis for empirical work on inventory movements, and has also completed research in the field of monetary and fiscal policy in intertemporal macroeconomic models of the economy. He is a published author of countless papers on economic theory, and has written for The Baltimore Sun on economic issues.
“He’s an institution,” Ball said.
A conference will be held in Maccini’s honor this Friday afternoon to celebrate his service to the economics profession, the Economics Department and the Hopkins community as a whole.
Many of his former students, a number of whom did their dissertations under him, will be in attendance. Maccini’s thesis advisor, Dale Mortensen from Northwestern University, will also be present. Mortensen won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2010.
“We might ask Dale at dinner what he’s more proud of,” Ball joked, “His Nobel Prize or having Lou as one of his students.”
