Peter Tamás Bauer abjured sentimentalism--or at least professed to--but even so, this gathering is an unabashedly sentimental occasion for me. Peter was my professor. He was also my teacher, which is not necessarily the same thing (a distinction that anyone in the academy will appreciate). And he was my friend.

I first met Peter Bauer in October 1977. At the time I was 21, and very Left. One of my first courses at the London School of Economics that semester was “The Economic Analysis of Underdeveloped Areas,” co-taught by Bauer and Hla Myint, and further fortified through a few cameo appearances by Basil Yamey.

To put the matter plainly, Peter Bauer was an absolutely infuriating professor. At his lectures, he would deliver long and provocative presentations that I knew to be wrong--completely wrong, deeply wrong, obviously wrong. The only problem was, I could not figure out how to prove they were wrong. 

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Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI.