Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey (née Donald McCloskey) (1942 - ) is an American economist and professor. She is also a transwoman who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1996.

Career

Donald McCloskey built a reputation as the conscience of his field, challenging the basic assumptions that economists made and pushing them to consider new ways of looking at economic problems. He received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University and spent 12 years teaching at the University of Chicago. He wrote close to 200 articles and 20 books, and his theories about the role that persuasion plays in human decisions about overreliance by economists on mathematical formulas have been widely taught.

Professor McCloskey has advanced understanding of the role of significance testing and its impact on the sciences (McCloskey 1985). The presumption of proof in significance testing mislays reliance on statistics and subverts the understanding of modeling complex human actors. As an insider this critique of the economics profession is a challenge to students and practitioners of the art of economics. The philosopher is advised to be aware of the bias in the technique and be careful of these implications during the practice of education and consulting.

McCloskey explored these themes of the virtues in economics when she presented at the Inaugural James_M._Buchanan Lecture at George Mason University on April 7, 2006. She claimed that of the seven virtues, economists focus only on prudence. In reality, "is an ethically drenched human activity" and that all seven virtues need to be present in the analysis of a well-rounded economist rather than the current focus on Prudence alone. A similar talk was given to the Marshall Society of Economics, at Cambridge University on May 3rd 2006. This topic will be the main emphasis of her upcoming work The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce.[http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/dpaper4706.pdf

Professor McCloskey holds a position at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Erasmus Universiteit, and University of Iowa; having previously taught at The University of Chicago B.A. Economics, Harvard College, 1964; Ph.D. Economics, Harvard University, 1970 ^*

Personal life

Née Donald McCloskey, Professor McCloskey is divorced from Joanne McCloskey, a professor of nursing at Iowa and his wife of 30 years.

Donald McCloskey spent years trying to please his father, Robert McCloskey, a distinguished political scientist at Harvard, who died of a heart attack aged 53, the same age at which Prof McCloskey announced her transsexuality.

Laura A. McCloskey, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, is the professor's sister. She and David W. Galenson, a former colleague of Donald McCloskey at the University of Chicago, have twice persuaded judges to commit Deirdre McCloskey to mental hospitals against her will, according to Deirdre McCloskey.

One day, Professor McCloskey was at a Social Science History Association meeting when two police officers interrupted a session that was being held to honour his work. The police took him to a hospital, from which he was released the next day.

In a letter to colleagues in economics, Mr. Galenson wrote that psychiatrists had found Professor McCloskey "manic", although not a danger to himself or others. But Professor McCloskey and several academics who came to the hospital to get him out say the psychiatrists had found nothing wrong with him.

The Social Science History Association passed a resolution condemning the actions against Professor McCloskey.

Laura A. McCloskey and Mr. Galenson refused to comment.

Deirdre McCloskey says she is eager to address "the issue of my alleged madness", as she puts it. "The fact is that I am not crazy, I am transsexual."

Fields of study

Books

The Bourgeois Virtues : Ethics for an Age of Commerce (June 2006)
The Secret Sins of Economics (August 2002)
The Rhetoric of Economics (April 1998)
Crossing (September 2000)

Articles

Modern Epistemology Against Analytic Philosophy: A Reply to Maki Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 33, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 1319-1323
The Rhetoric of Law and Economics Michigan Law Review Vol. 86, No. 4 (Feb., 1988), pp. 752-767
The Loss Function Has Been Mislaid: The Rhetoric of Significance Tests. The American Economic Review Vol. 75, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Ninety-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1985), pp. 201-205
The Rhetoric of Economics Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 481-517

External links

"Leading Economist Stuns Field By Deciding To Become a Woman", The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 16, 1996
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