Who is Henry Spearman; M. Skousen

"So if there is a real model for Spearman, his identity remains a mystery, at least to me." -Herbert Stein, foreword, Murder at the Margin O ver the past several weeks, I took a break from writing and decided to read three murder mystery novels, all authored by Marshall Jevons, a penname for William Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga, professors of economics at Trinity University in San An tonio and the University of Virginia,respec tively. Elementary Economics, My Dear Watson What makes these mysteries fascinating is the ingenious way the writers incorporate basic principles of economics to solve the murders. Marginal utility, the law of de mand, consumer surplus, opportunity cost, profit maximization, game theory, and Adam Smith's invisible hand all playa part in advancing the stories and ultimately catching the culprits. As Henry Spearman, the detective-hero, says to the local police Dr. Skousen is an economist at Rollins College, Department ofEconomics, Winter Park, Florida 32789, and editor of Forecasts &. Strategies, one of the largest investment newsletters in the country. For more information about his news letter and books, contact Phillips Publishing Inc.

at (800) 777-5005. All three Spearman mysteries are available from Laissez Faire Books, (800) 326-0996. by Mark Skousen investigator in Murder at the Margin, "El ementary, my dear Vincent. Elementary economics, that is!" Let me give you an example from each novel, without revealing the entire plot. In Murder at the Margin (Princeton University Press, 1978; paperback, 1993),Spearman is able to dismiss Mrs. Forte as a suspect in the killing of her husband because "a woman usually would be financially far better off by divorcing her husband than by killing him." Mrs. Forte's alimony payments over her expected lifetime would far exceed the death benefits from an insurance policy. Clearly, someone else must have killed Mr. Forte. In the second novel, Fatal Equilibrium (MIT Press, 1985; Ballantine Books paper back, 1986), Spearman uncovers a fraud in the research of a fellow Harvard professor.

In reviewing the professor's book on prices of various commodities in a remote island, Spearman discovers a statistic that violates the law of utility maximization. The sleuth quickly concludes that his colleague made up the figures . . . and therefore engaged in murder to hide his fictitious research. In the third novel, A Deadly Indifference (Carroll & Graf, 1995), Spearman is led to suspect an individual who purchases an automobile even though another car in bet ter condition is available at the same price. Obviously, Spearman reasons, the suspect values something in the first car tojustify the monetary difference. That something leads to the murderer. 461 462 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1996 Defending the Free Market Another likeable feature is the free market bias running through the mystery series. Henry Spearman consistently de fends economic liberty and attacks socialist thinking. He supports free trade, economic inequality, imperfect competition, and pri vate property rights. The economist takes on collectivists of all shades-anthropolo gists, sociologists, environmentalists, social democrats, Keynesians, and Marxoids.

Who Is This Free-Market Economist? Who is Henry Spearman, this remarkable proponent of free markets? Spearman is described as a short, balding, stubborn, frowsy professor, former president of the American Economic Association, and a "child of impecunious Jewish immigrants." Breit and Elzinga admit that they originally had Milton Friedman in mind, except that instead of the University of Chicago, Spear man comes from Harvard. "There is no such thing as a free lunch," Spearman declares in Murder on the Margin. (p. 90) And like Friedman, Spearman is old-fash~ ioned, using a pencil and paper, rather than a computer, to solve problems. Yet the focus of the amateur sleuth is decidedly microeconomic in nature, not monetary pol icy or macro-theorizing. Austrian economists will be happy to find a great deal of Ludwig von Mises in Henry Spearman as well. (I thank Roger Garri son for this observation.) The detective economist defends Say's Law, the finan cial markets, advertising, competition, commodity money, even methodological dualism. "Economics is different from chemistry, " Spearman declares. "The methods are different. What goes on in one place doesn't necessarily go in another."

(Fatal Equilibrium, p. 111) In A Deadly Indifference, the august professor delivers an unpopular speech before the Cambridge faculty in the mid-1960s, forecasting the collapse of Communism because it "is inconsistent with all that we know about the motivations of human action." (p. 36) Like Mises, who predicted the impossi ble of socialist economic calculation, Spearman is ridiculed for his extreme posi tion. More Like Becker? However, having read all three novels, my feeling is that Henry Spearman is more like Gary Becker than anyone else. Becker, Chicago professor and Nobel laureate, ap plies economics to marriage, crime, and other non-traditional areas. (See, for exam ple, his book, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, University of Chicago Press, 1976.) So does Spearman, "pushing his economics into criminology." He de clares, "Love, hate, benevolence, malevo lence or any 'emotion which involves others can be subject to economic analysis." (Mur der at the Margin, p. 61) Spearman, like Becker, also favors Mar shall's definitionof economics as the "study of man in the ordinary business of life."

"Spearman took this definition seriously even though it was considered a bit old fashioned to some of his younger colleagues who saw economics as a solving of abstract puzzles unrelated to real events." (Murder at the Margin, p. 113) The authors write that Spearman is trained in statistics and corroborates his ~ 'high logical standards" with "empirical evidence." (Fatal Equilib rium, p. 103) Gary Becker's faithful ap plication of microeconomic principles to solving problems is consistent with Henry Spearman's modus operandi. He may not look like Spearman, but he acts like him. Breit and Elzinga are to be congratulated for' developing a creative, clever way to expound the principles of free-market eco nomics. The response has been gratifying. Many professors make Murder at the Mar gin and the other novels required reading in their classes. 1recommend you put them on your summer reading list. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY How Much Do You Know About Liberty?(a quiz) Try your hand at answering the following questions: 1. What method of resolving disputes did trial by jury replace?