Richard Tresch (Economics)

Promoted to full professor

Ph.D., MIT

Faculty member since 1969

Specialization: Public sector economics

Representative publication: Public Finance: A Normative Theory, Second Edition (Academic Press, 2002) 

“Economists' working assumption is that people look out for themselves—that we try to squeeze every last bit of advantage out of every situation we're in. For the market system, this model works fine. But in the government sector, which ends up with the tough problems the market can’t handle, I think the model needs to be changed. For example, in the case of 'non-exclusive goods,' such as national defense. We are all consuming whatever the defense posture of the United States is at the moment. In situations like that, where it takes some sort of political cooperative mechanism to allocate the good, the self-serving assumption is, I think, too pessimistic a way of understanding human nature. But if you don’t assume people are self-serving, what do you assume? That’s my line of research.”