Ed Kuska was born on the 10th June 1937 in Alliance, Nebraska. Having obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree at Idaho State University in 1959, he came to the LSE in 1959 to study for a Ph.D. He was initially supervised by Bill Phillips and later by Dick Lipsey. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1970 with a thesis entitled ‘The Theory of Devaluation, Uniform Commercial Policies and Transfer Payments’. In 1961 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Economics at the School. In 1964, he was promoted to Lecturer and in 1982 he became a Senior Lecturer, the rank he held until his retirement in 2002.
His research interests were summarised in his biographical entry in Blaug (1986, p. 484):
"My early interests were in macroeconomics and general equilibrium models, but as the international monetary system began exhibiting signs of stress in the later 1960s, I became concerned with issues in international economics, especially those related to the balance of payments. In my work in this area, I attempted to take full account of general equilibrium requirements and this led to a number of monetary approach results and to a reconsideration of the two-country Keynesian and asset-approach models."
This was reflected in a number of articles he published between 1972 and 1982 (see the list of publications below). What is striking about this list is the conciseness of Ed’s writing style: his eight articles take up just over 50 journal pages in total.
After 1982 he concentrated on teaching and student welfare, rather than on research. He was an excellent teacher and taught Mathematics, International Monetary Economics and Macroeconomic Theory. The course he particularly enjoyed teaching was the month-long, intensive September Course in Mathematics that was taught to students coming to study for the one-year MSc in Economics. His style was relaxed with lots of jokes and even students who thought they were ‘bad at maths’ enjoyed the course and progressed enough to handle the requirements of the MSc.
He had a strong commitment to the welfare of students, which was reflected in the care he took to respond to the problems of his tutees. This was expressed more generally in the time he spent as a Warden in several of LSE’s student halls of residence. He was the Warden in Carr-Saunders Hall for twenty-two years from 1st January 1971 until 31st December 1993 and the High Holborn Residence from September 1995 to August 2002. Many students arriving in London for the first time, particularly from another country, would find it a daunting and lonely experience. LSE had a policy of offering all new undergraduates a place in a hall of residence and the Warden has an important part to play in the process of settling in. Ed was particularly approachable and helpful to new students.
Ed’s success as a Warden was confirmed by many of the hundreds of LSE students who lived in LSE halls where Ed was the Warden. On a number of occasions when I called on Ed in the Warden’s Flat at High Holborn I would be introduced to a visitor, who was a former hall resident, just dropping by to see Ed on his or her way through London.
An indication of Ed’s style as Warden has been captured in fiction. In the novel by Benjamin Markovits entitled A Weekend in New York (Faber & Faber 2018, Paperback version 2019) there appears:
"Paul, listening to their cross talk, remembered something. Bill had a friend in London they used to stay with, an American guy who worked at the LSE. His apartment was in the penthouse of a student building, right in the middle of the city—you walked out of the lobby into a bus lane. Red double-deckers. There was a pub on the corner with etched-glass windows, the side street led to Covent Garden. The apartment itself felt like an island of Americana. Leather couches sat in front of an early large-screen TV, whose projector took up the middle of the room." (p. 238)
Anyone who had visited Ed’s flat at the High Holborn Student Residence would have recognised the connection and it was confirmed in an email from the author to this writer (02/12/2019):
"You're right, of course, that passage is a reference to Ed's apartment. My sister and I got food poisoning on the flight over and spent one summer week watching Nick Faldo take the British Open with a final round of 18 pars. Watching the game on his big TV, lying on his leather couch."
When Ed announced at his Retirement Party that he planned to return to the USA, his many friends were unhappy at the prospect of losing his company and thought of many ingenious reasons why he should remain in London. Ed had strong family attachments and our arguments failed. He moved to Westminster, a suburb of Denver, Colorado to be close to his family and it was there that he died on 31 August 2019.
Ed Kuska will be greatly missed by his many friends, both at LSE and among the LSE alumni who benefitted from contact with him.
References and Publications
Blaug, M. (ed.) (1986) Whose Who in Economics? (Second Edition), (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books).
Publications by E.A. Kuska
(1966) ‘The simple analytics of the Phillips curve’, Economica ns, Vol. 33 November, 462-7.
(1972) ‘The pure theory of devaluation’, Economica ns, Vol. 39 August, 309-315.
(1973 Maxima, Minima and Comparative Statics, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson).
(1975) ‘The long-run behaviour of the Patinkin model’, Economica ns, Vol. 42 August, 292-7.
(1976) ‘Devaluation, equi-proportional export subsidies and import tariffs, and transfer payments’, Economica ns, Vol. 43, May, 181-4
(1977) ‘The post-devaluation time profile of reserves and prices under neoclassical assumptions’, Economica ns, Vol. 44 August, 289-92.
(1978a) ‘On the almost total inadequacy of Keynesian balance-of-payments theory’, American Economic Review, Vol. 68 September, 659-70.
(1978b) ‘Growth and the balance-of-payments; the Mundell and Wein theorems’, Economic Journal, Vol. 88 December, 830-2.
(1982) ‘On the adequacy or inadequacy of Keynesian balance-of-payments theory: a reply’, American Economic Review, Vol. 72 September, 887-98.
Jim Thomas (Emeritus Reader in Economics and Research Associate, STICERD, LSE)