Obituary: John F. Muth (1930-2005) John F. Muth passed away this past Sunday in his Key West Florida home. Born in Chicago in 1930, the younger brother of Richard F. Muth studied industrial engineering as an undergraduate at Washington University in Saint Louis, where his family eventually settled. John F. Muth did his graduate work at the GSIA at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie-Mellon University, where he received a Ph.D. in mathematical economics in 1962. He spent the 1957-58 academic year as a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago and the 1961-62 academic year at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University. He was affiliated with Carnegie as a research associate from 1956 until 1959, as an assistant professor from 1959 until 1962, and as an untenured associate professor from 1962 until 1964. Muth subsequently moved to Michigan State University and was next employed by Indiana University from 1969 until 1994. Since his retirement in 1994, he had been dividing his time between Bloomington, Indiana and the Florida Keys, trying to avoid both the harsh Indiana winters and the Florida hurricane season. Muth has written three papers that develop the rational expectations hypothesis (Muth 1960a, 1961, 1981a). Though Muth had little to do with the macroeconomic interpretation of his hypothesis, it could very well be the case that he had never been a true believer in its microeconomic validity. Instead, it has been suggested that he may have meant the rational expectations hypothesis to be an illustration of the bounded rationality implicit in theories of rationality and of the rationality implicit in the bounded rationality approaches (Sent 2002). Rather than following up on the inconsistencies he had noted in theories of bounded rationality and rationality approaches, Muth started digging up discrepancies in elsewhere, which led him to move progressively back towards some form of bounded rationality. In the end, Muth's hypothesis had enormous unintended consequences, because others, including his colleague Lucas, did take rational expectations seriously. Muth's interests ranged from playing cello to skiing, sailing, and flying airplanes, though he had to give up the latter when he discovered that he was afraid of heights. What made Muth such a fascinating character is that he jumped onto inconsistencies in theories long before others recognized them. What made him such a puzzling character is that he did not follow through on his observations concerning these inconsistencies. He was very critical of his own work, but very unselfish and helpful in supporting others. On the one hand, "[m]uch like Bob Dylan's long-rumored mounds of unreleased basement tapes, stacks of completed papers that Muth had written but which he later judged not worthy of a top journal are said to exist" (Brannon 1999, 18). On the other hand, many people have taken advantage of Muth over the years, including researchers who have become famous by developing his ideas. Finally, was always somewhat of a devil's advocate. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Brannon, Ike. 1999. John Muth, Rational Expectations, and the Nobel Prize. The Ryder Magazine 02/1999:18. Groff, Gene K., and John F. Muth, eds. 1969. Operations Management: Selected Readings. Homewood, Ill.: Irwin. Groff, Gene K., and John F. Muth. 1972. Operations Management: Analysis for Decisions. Homewood, Ill.: Irwin. Jacobs, F. Robert, and John F. Muth. 1988. Cycle Times and Inventories for Finite Queue, Open Flow Shops with Deterministic Service Times. In The Economics of Inventory Management, edited by Attila Chik�n and Michael C. Lovell. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Lucas, Robert E., and Thomas J. Sargent, eds. 1981. Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Muth, John F. 1954. A Note on Balanced Growth. Econometrica 22:493-495. --. 1960a. Optimal Properties of Exponentially Weighted Forecasts. Journal of the American Statistical Association 55.290:299-306. Reprinted in Robert E. Lucas and Thomas J. Sargent 1981. --. 1960b. Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements (Abstract). Econometrica 28:704. --. 1961. Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements. Econometrica 29.3:315-335. Reprinted in Arnold Zellner 1968, David Cass and Lionel W. McKenzie 1974, and Robert E. Lucas and Thomas J. Sargent 1981. --. 1963. The Effect of Uncertainty in Job Times on Optimal Schedules. In John F. Muth and Gerald L. Thompson 1963. --. 1966. Forecasting Models: Their Development and Implications for Decision-Making. Research Toward the Development of Management Thought, Academy of Management 26th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, December 27-29, 1966:108-114. --. 1981a. Estimation of Economic Relationships Containing Latent Expectations Variables. In Robert E. Lucas and Thomas J. Sargent 1981. --. 1981b. An Equilibrium Choice Model of Performance and Satisfaction, School of Business, Indiana University, Discussion Paper #170, February 27, 1981. --. 1982. Experience as a Search Process. Proceedings of the Midwest American Institute of Decision Analysis Meeting, Milwaukee, April 7-9, 1982:72-74. --. 1985. Properties of Some Short-Run Business Forecasts. Eastern Economic Journal 11:200-210. --. 1986. Search Theory and the Manufacturing Progress Function. Management Science 32:948-962. --. 1987. Discussion of Schips' Paper. In Theoretical Empiricism, edited by Herman Wold. New York: Paragon House. --. 1989. A Stochastic Theory of the Generalized Cobb-Douglas Production Function. In Cost Analysis Applications of Economics and Operations Research, edited by Thomas R. Gulledge, Jr. and Lewis A. Litteral. New York: Springer-Verlag. --. 1994. Does Economics Need Theories? In Philip A. Klein 1994a. Muth, John F., and Gerald L. Thompson, eds. 1963. Industrial Scheduling. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Sent, Esther-Mirjam. 2002. How (Not) to Influence People: The Contrary Tale of John F. Muth. History of Political Economy 34:291-319. -- Esther-Mirjam Sent