Obituary: John McMillan
John McMillan, one of Canterbury 's most distinguished economics graduates and the Jonathan B Lovelace Professor of International Management and Economics at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University , died on 13 March after a courageous battle with cancer.
McMillan, a pupil at Linwood Intermediate, won a scholarship to attend Christ's College in the mid 1960s where he had an inspiring mathematics teacher in Alan Ramsay and was a Dux of the school. After gaining a Junior Scholarship in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and English, McMillan secured direct entry to Canterbury 's Honours School in mathematics and Stage 2 chemistry. He was awarded a B Sc with first-class honours in mathematics in 1972 and became one of six “Knight's-movers” into economics in that year. He graduated M Com with first-class honours and was a teaching assistant for a year in the Economics Department before he followed one of his lecturers, the late Richard Manning, to the University of New South Wales where he completed his Ph.D in 1978.
He then moved to the University of Western Ontario for 10 years before becoming one of the five founding professors at the new Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California , San Diego . At Western Ontario , he began a successful collaborative research relationship with Preston McAfee (now at the California Institute of Technology) working on the economics of auctions and bidding. McMillan, a prolific publisher, with five books and more than 90 articles and book chapters, made major contributions to the international literature on the applications of modern microeconomic theory.
His work has influenced the design of policies that have raised billions of dollars for governments through the auctions of radio spectrum and other property rights. His international standing amongst economists is reflected by his tenure as editor of the Journal of Economic Literature (1997-2004) and his election to a Fellowship of the Econometric Society.
Despite his international acclaim, McMillan never forgot his New Zealand roots. He was always in touch with local issues, frequently visited New Zealand 's economics departments, especially Canterbury , and contributed to the New Zealand Association of Economists' Conferences. And in 2005, the Association made him a Distinguished Fellow.
Amongst other things, the citation for the award said: The reforms in the centrally planned economies that began with the liberalization of agriculture in China in 1978 soon made their way on to John's research agenda. Issues of asymmetric information and strategic behaviour that matter in auctions are even more important in reforming economies where weak institutions often fail to protect property rights. This phase of John's research, carried out at both San Diego and Stanford, ultimately led to his popular book, Reinventing the Bazaar . Understanding why markets work well in many places, but badly in others is a key to prosperity.
The Dean of the Stanford Business School where McMillan had held his Chair since 1999 wrote: “John in many ways epitomized the Stanford Business School . He was a brilliant scholar; he made important contributions to microeconomic theory, but his special talent was in applying theory to real-world issues and problems. And he was a superb expositor. His book, Reinventing the Bazaar, A Natural History of Markets , is a wonderful exploration of why markets work or fail, based on deep theory but accessible to a lay audience”.
Despite his fame, John McMillan remained the quintessential Kiwi bloke, modest and charmingly unassuming. As a student, he combined native brilliance with intellectual focus and curiosity. A holder of the J B Condliffe scholarship as a student, John McMillan's fame equals, if not surpasses that of Condliffe. McMillan's death at the premature age of 56 is a tragic loss to the world of economics scholarship.
John McMillan is survived by his wife, Patrice Lord, stepson Tim, and his mother, sister and brother.
22 March 2007