William L. Breit


William Breit was an American economist, mystery novelist, and professional comedian. Breit was born in New Orleans. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Texas and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1961. He was an Assistant and associate professor of economics at Louisiana State University On the recommendation of Milton Friedman he was interviewed and hired at the University of Virginia where he was Associate Professor and Professor of Economics. He returned to his San Antonio as the E.M. Stevens Distinguished Professor of Economics at Trinity University in 1983 and retired as the Vernon F. Taylor Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 2002. He is considered an expert in the history of economic thought and anti-trust economics. He established the Nobel Laureate Lecture Series at Trinity University and is most notable as a mystery novelist where their murder mysteries are solved by applying basic economic principles.

Books

Readings in Microeconomics with Harold M. Hochman.Readings in Microeconomics, with Harold M. Hochman, Second Revised Edition. Cloth and paper editions. The Academic Scribblers: American Economists in Collision with Roger L. Ransom.Science and Ceremony: The Institutional Economics of C.E. Ayres with a foreword by John Kenneth Galbraith .The Antitrust Penalties: A Study in Law and Economics, with Kenneth G. Elzinga Cited by Justice Burger in Texas Industries v Radcliff Materials, 451 U.S. 630, 636.Murder at the Margin by Marshall Jevons . Paperback, 1979.The Academic Scribblers, Revised Edition, with Roger Ranson.The Antitrust Casebook: Milestones in Economic Regulation. with Kenneth Elzinga.The Fatal Equilibrium by Marshall Jevons Antitrust Penalty Reform: An Economic Analysis, with Kenneth Elzinga.Readings in Microeconomics, with Harold M. Hochman and Edward Saueracker, Third Edition.Lives of the Laureates: Seven Nobel Economists, with co-editor Roger W. Spencer. The Antitrust Casebook, Second Revised Edition with Kenneth Elzinga.Lives of the Laureates: Ten Nobel Economists, Second Revised Edition with Roger Spencer. Murder at the Margin by Marshall Jevons . Cloth and paperback editions, 1993. Lives of the Laureates: Thirteen Nobel Economists, Third Revised Edition with Roger Spencer A Deadly Indifference by Marshall Jevons . The Antitrust Casebook: Milestones in Economic Regulation, Third Edition with Kenneth Elzinga.The Academic Scribblers, Third Edition with Roger Ransom, with a “Foreword” by Robert M. Solow and “Afterword” by the authors. Lives of the Laureates: Eighteen Nobel Economists, with Barry T. Hirsch, 4th ed., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004.Lives of the Laureates: Twenty Three Nobel Economists, with Barry T. Hirsch, 5th ed., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009.

Articles

  • “The Debt Burden and Future Generations: A Review of the Controversy,” Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Conference on Taxation, National Taxpayers Union, 1965.
  • “Some Neglected Early Critics of the Wages Fund Theory,” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, June, 1967.
  • “The Wages Fund Controversy Revisited,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, November, 1967.
  • “Public-Goods Interaction in Stackelberg Geometry,” Western Economic Journal, March, 1968.
  • “Approaches to Oligopoly,” Social Science Quarterly, June, 1968.
  • “Oligopoly Symposium: Reply to Hattwick, Sailors and Barton,” Social Science Quarterly, March, 1969.
  • “Some Early Unconventional Wisdom on Utility Regulation,” Social Science Quarterly, March, 1970.
  • “Distributional Equality and Aggregate Utility,” American Economic Review, June, 1970.
  • “Markets,” Encyclopedia International, 1971.
  • “Social Responsibility and the Corporation: Discussion,” Journal of Economic Issues, March, 1972.
  • “Distributional Equality and Aggregate Utility: Reply,” American Economic Review, June, 1972.
  • “Antitrust Penalties and Attitudes Toward Risk: An Economic Analysis,” Harvard Law Review, February, 1973.
  • “The Development of Clarence Ayres’s Theoretical Institutionalism,” Social Science Quarterly, September, 1973.
  • “Income Redistribution and Efficiency Norms,” in Redistribution Through Public Choice, eds., H.M. Hochman and G.E. Peterson.
  • “The Instruments of Antitrust Enforcement,” in The Antitrust Dilemma, eds., J. Dalton and S. Levin.
  • “Private Actions – The Purposes Sought and the Results Achieved: The Economist’s View,” Antitrust Law Journal, Spring, 1974.
  • “Antitrust Enforcement and Economic Efficiency: The Uneasy Case for Treble Damages,” Journal of Law and Economics, October, 1974.
  • “Product Differentiation and Institutionalism: New Shadows on an Old Terrain,” Journal of Economic Issues, December, 1974.
  • “The Effectiveness of Private Treble Damages as an Antitrust Enforcement Mechanism: Efficiency and Equity Considerations,” Southwestern University Law Review, Vol. 8, 1976.
  • “Starving the Leviathan: Balanced Budget Prescriptions Before Keynes,” in Fiscal Responsibility in Constitutional Democracy, edited by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner.
  • “Ayres, Clarence Edwin,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Biographical Supplement.
  • “Ezra Pound and the GNP,” Southern Economic Journal, January, 1980.
  • “Information for Antitrust and Business Activity: Line of Business Reporting,” in The Federal Trade Commission Since 1970, edited by Kenneth W. Clarkson and Timothy J. Muris.
  • “Mr. Friedman’s Strictures on Murder at the Margin,” Public Choice, Vol. 36, 1981.
  • “New Approaches to Antitrust Damages: The Alternatives to Mandatory Trebling,” The Business Lawyer, American Bar Association, 1984.
  • “Galbraith and Friedman: Two Versions of Economic Reality,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Fall, 1984.
  • “Private Antitrust Enforcement: The New Learning,” Journal of Law and Economics, May, 1985.
  • “Biography and the Making of Economic Worlds,” Southern Economic Journal, April, 1987.
  • “Creating the Virginia School: Charlottesville as an Academic Environment in the 1960s,” Economic Inquiry, October, 1987.
  • “Introduction” to “Political Economy 1957–1982,” by James M. Buchanan in Ideas, Their Origins, and Their Consequences.
  • “Institutional Economics as an Ideological Movement” in Philosophy, History and Social Action, edited by Sidney Hook, William L. O’Neill and Roger O’Toole.
  • “Resale Price Maintenance: What Do Economists Know and When Did They Know It?,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, March, 1991.
  • “Discrimination and Diversity: Market and Non-Market Settings,”, Public Choice, Vol. 84, 1995.
  • “The Yeager Mystique: The Polymath as Teacher, Scholar and Colleague”, Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 22, Spring 1996.
  • "Stone, Sir John Richard N." in An Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics, edited by Thomas Cate,.
  • "Reputation versus Influence: The Evidence from Textbook References", Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 23, Fall 1997.
  • “In Memoriam: Herbert Stein,” Southern Economic Journal, vol. 66, April 2002.
  • "Economics as Detective Fiction,” with Kenneth Elzinga Journal of Economic Education,Fall 2002.

Awards and honors

Administrative positions

  • Director of Graduate Studies in Economics, University of Virginia, 1967–1968
  • Director of Honors Program in Economics, University of Virginia, 1967–1974
  • Institute Director, Summer Institute on the American Economy, University of Virginia, 1974 and 1975
  • Creator and Director of the Trinity University Nobel Economists Lecture Series from 1984 to 2002.

Editorial duties

Visiting appointments