William A. Brock has taught in the Departments of
Economics at the University
of Rochester, Cornell University, and the University
of Chicago, before moving to the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is now Vilas
Research Professor of
Economics. He has also been an External Professor at the
Santa Fe Institute since 1989.
His many awards include election as a Fellow of the
Econometric Society in 1974, a
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1992, and as a Member of the
National Academy of Sciences in 1998. His over 100 invited
lectures include presentations in
Poland, Belgium, France, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Australia,
England, Sweden, Norway, and Australia.
Brock has been a leading contributor to
the development of methods of
intertemporal equilibrium analysis in the areas of
growth theory, monetary theory, and
finance. More recently, he has played a crucial
role in the development of new methods
for the analysis of nonlinear dynamics in macroeconomics
and finance, and models of
expectations that relax the assumption of rational expectations.
I interviewed Buz in the faculty cafeteria near the Social Science Research Institute
building, on the Madison campus of the University
of Wisconsin, on October 22, 1998.
Our interview was interrupted when he had to go to
teach, and then was finished by
phone on December 11, 1998. The transcript that
follows does little justice to the
liveliness of Buz's conversation, mainly
because of my inability to transcribe the
animated facial expressions and hand gestures that
made the mathematical references more
concrete. I have added several footnotes to the
transcript, identifying some of the
published sources that were mentioned during our conversation.
