In Memoriam
Walter E. Hoadley
1916-2003
Business economics lost an outstanding
professional economist,
and NABE lost a good
friend and role model with the death
of Walter Hoadley on February 19,
2003.
Born in San Francisco on August 16, 1916, Walter received his AB in 1938, his MA in 1940 and his Ph.D. in 1946 from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 1942 to 1949. In 1949, he joined Armstrong World Industries, Lancaster, PA, as an economist. In 1954, he became treasurer until 1960, vice president and treasurer until 1966, and director 1962-87. In 1966, he joined Bank of America NT&SA in San Francisco as senior vice president, chief economist, and member of the managing committee and became executive vice president and chief economist from 1968 until his retirement in 1981. Then, he joined the Hoover Institution, Stanford University as senior research fellow and remained there until his death.
His professional and civic activities were too numerous to list, but a few are especially noteworthy. He was deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, 1960-61 and chairman 1962-66. He was a fellow of the American Statistical Association and served as vice president on the board of directors 1952-54 and as president in 1958. He served on the board of the American Finance Association 1955-56 and as president in 1969. He also was a member of the Conference of Business Economists and chairman in 1962.
An early member of NABE, Walter was elected a fellow and was active in the San Francisco chapter, where he served on the executive committee. He made a major contribution to NABE through two conferences he organized and chaired in 1986 and 1988, while he was at the Hoover Institution. The Hoover Institution sponsored the conferences and distributed the proceedings, which were published, together with succinct summaries written by Walter, as special editions of Business Economics in February 1987 and February 1989.
For the 1986 conference, Walter gathered fifty business economists, academics, government officials and businessmen to consider “The United States in Tomorrow’s World Economy.” The participants and speakers were from the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Their papers were distributed prior to the meeting to those attending, and the ensuing discussions were lively and informative. The 1989 conference was similarly organized, with an international group of speakers. The topic was “Economic Challenges Facing the Next Administration,” particularly timely at the beginning of the first Bush Administration.
However, the listing of his achievements in no way does justice to the skills, knowledge and warm personality of this extraordinary man. He was an accomplished speaker, talking without notes, and with a brevity and logic that made his presentations popular with professional and nonprofessional audiences alike. He always stressed the importance of international developments, drawing on his experiences through extensive travel abroad and his friendships with economists worldwide. His favorite admonition was that forecasts should be “economically sound, politically possible and psychologically likely,” that is, after preparing an economic forecast, a business economist should review the political consequences and the pubic reaction to the developments forecast to see whether the forecast might be undone by noneconomic events.
Walter’s 1988 book, Looking Behind the Crystal Ball, was a major contribution to business economics. In it, Walter described the evolution of the profession after World War II, the profile of a successful business economist, the tools used, the use of personal contacts, the place of professional organizations, and the critical importance of contributing to the corporate team. He also made an impassioned plea for higher standards for using the title “business economist,” predicting its eventual demise if tangible, useful contributions were not made to corporate success and public welfare. If anything, his comments are more pertinent today than they were fifteen years ago.
He also gave freely of his time and knowledge to younger members of the profession. On a personal note, I first met Walter when, as a young security analyst for the Wellington Fund in the 1950s, I visited the headquarters of Armstrong in Lancaster, PA several times a year to interview Walter and other senior executives of the company. Not only was Walter always cordial and helpful, but he also urged me to pursue my doctoral studies at New York University, commuting weekly to New York from Philadelphia. He also discussed my dissertation topic with me, urging that I write on something relevant to my daily work. He read a draft of the dissertation, which considered the ways of measuring and evaluating corporate profits, and made many useful comments. Such kindness was typical of Walter; I was not the only beneficiary of such help and thoughtfulness. He was truly an outstanding example of a business economist but also of a warm and generous human being.
Edmund A. Mennis
Editor Emeritus
Business Economics
Edgar R. Fiedler passed away
while playing golf at age seventythree.
Not to trivialize the loss, Ed
himself would undoubtedly have thought
that was a pretty good exit if one’s time
was up.