February 1st, 2013 → 7:00 am @ Lea // No Comments

Lear: “Dost thou call me fool, boy?”

Fool: “All thy other titles thou has given away; that thou wast born with.”

– King Lear

I came across an old academic article by Jack Hirshleifer the other day (“Shakespeare vs. Becker on Altruism: The Importance of Having the Last Word,” Journal of Economic Literature 15(2):500-502) where Jack begins the article with this Shakespeare quote, and then uses it throughout the piece.  I won’t bother to explain the economics of it here, but it was fun to read.  Let’s just say that Jack wasn’t calling Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker a fool himself, but he was arguing a non-foolhardy point in Becker’s analysis.