Thomas Mayer (January 18, 1927 – June 12, 2015) was an Austrian-born American economist who was professor of economics at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

. He previously taught at

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State Coll ...

, the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

, Michigan State University, and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He is known for his work in

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...

and economic methodology. Mayer received his Ph.D. from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1953.

Early life

Mayer was an only child born to middle-class Jewish parents in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Austria, in 1927. He was not a good student, except for subjects that he liked and only barely passed the test to enter gymnasium. The

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

made it difficult for his father to find work and the family began trying to get out of Austria in 1938. The difficulty was to get a visa to enter another country; leaving Austria was then not a problem. Mayer's parents applied for a visa in March 1938. Because England was accepting refugee children, Mayer was able to get a visa, but had to leave alone in September 1938, without his parents. His father was arrested in November and was released on the condition that he leave Austria within 48 hours, enabling him—but not his wife—to also get a visa to Britain. In November 1941, his mother received a visa to the United States and left on the last boat before

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...

, after which transit would have been impossible.Roger E. Backhouse, Roger Middleton (eds.
''Exemplary Economists: North America''
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Vol. 1 (2000), pp. 94–97. Retrieved October 19, 2011) Mayer's father was interned as an "

enemy alien In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and ...

" in England, following the outbreak of war and the issuance of

Defence Regulation 18b Defence Regulation 18B, often referred to as simply 18B, was one of the Defence Regulations used by the British Government during and before the Second World War. The complete name for the rule was Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regula ...

and British concern about a fifth column of Nazi collaborators forming in England. He was released in 1942 and was allowed to work, enabling him to take care of his son. He sent Mayer to

Bunce Court School The Bunce Court School was an independent, private boarding school in the village of Otterden, in Kent, England. It was founded in 1933 by Anna Essinger, who had previously founded a boarding school, Landschulheim Herrlingen in the south of Germa ...

, then in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

, where it had been evacuated for the war's duration. The family wasn't reunited until 1944. His death was announced on June 12, 2015.

Selected works

* ''Monetary Policy in the United States, Permanent Income, Wealth and Consumption, Intermediate Macroeconomics'' * ''The Structure of Monetarism'' * ''Money, Banking and the Economy'' * ''Revealing Monetary Policy'' * ''Monetarism and Macroeconomic Policy'' * ''Truth versus Precision in Economics'' * ''Doing Economic Research'' * ''Monetary Policy and the Great Inflation in the United States''

References

External links

Professor Emeritus Thomas Mayer
faculty page at the UC Davies Department of Economics. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mayer, Thomas 1927 births 2015 deaths Austrian emigrants to the United States Columbia University alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty West Virginia University faculty University of Notre Dame faculty Michigan State University faculty University of California, Davis faculty American economists People educated at Bunce Court School