Dear Board Colleagues and Staff Members -
I am very sorry to share the news that our colleague Betsy Bailey,
who joined the NBER Board as an at-large member in 1993, passed away
yesterday after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. She served as
board chair from 2005 until 2008, and moved to emeritus status in 2020.
Betsy, an expert on regulatory economics and industrial
organization, was a pioneer. After graduating from Radcliffe College,
she worked as a technical programmer at Bell Labs for more than a
decade. During that time, she earned a master's degree in economics
from the Stevens Institute of Technology, followed by a Ph.D. from
Princeton, where she was the first woman doctoral graduate in
economics. She subsequently moved to, and led, Bell Labs' Economic
Research Department. Betsy was appointed a commissioner of the Civil
Aviation Board in 1977 and she played a central part in the deregulation
of the US airline industry.
After her Washington service, Betsy joined the faculty at the
Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon
University, first as a professor and then as dean. When she was
appointed dean in 1983, she was the first woman to lead a top ten
business school. In 1991, she moved to the Business and Public Policy
Group at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. At the
time of her passing, Betsy was the John C. Hower Professor Emeritus at
Wharton.
Betsy was a very engaged NBER board member and a constant source of
valuable advice. She also contributed to many other organizations. She
was a trustee of both the Brookings Institution and Princeton
University, and she served as a board member at Altria, CSX, and
TIAA-CREF. In 2009, the Committee on the Status of Women in the
Economics Profession honored her with its lifetime achievement award,
the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award.
Betsy's contributions to the NBER will be deeply missed.
Jim
Received on Fri Aug 19 2022 - 19:16:14 EDT
