> I watched this when the conference happened last year, so I'm
> hazy on the details but I think Foley is great. I read a great long
> interview with him recently (from one of those books of interviews
> by economists of economists... for economists (a genre with a
> whole Dewey Decimal to itself I'm sure)). I had no idea beforehand
> that he had a history in technical general equilibrium going back to
> the 1960s, before getting into Marx in the 1970s, or that he is
> considered quite respectable in mainstream economics for his work
> on complexity.
I think that Duncan is now well respected for *everything* he does, and deservedly so. I mean, he's the current head of the Eastern Economics Association, taking over after Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz. And I'm not exaggerating much by saying that Stiglitz and Krugman are two of his most ardent admirers. But Duncan's original claim to fame was his work on public finance and monetary economics. In the field of public finance (much of which stuff is very relevant to the study of the viability of socialism!), he made important contributions, including the generalization of Paul Samuelson and Erik Lindahl results on public goods.
In the field of monetary economics, he's successfully managed to expand and update Marx's theory of money (well, I have my qualms with his presentation, but agree mostly with his main results) to include fiat money in a modern capitalist economy. He got into these issues early on, as a student. His dissertation is about the monetary mechanism and public financing. He very carefully deconstructed the macro monetary paradigm of the late 1960s and 1970s, as presented in Patinkin's Money, Interest, and Prices. From a Marxist perspective, he took part in some sort of seminar with people on the West Coast that included Suzanne de Brunhoff. (After working for the MIT, he moved at Stanford in the 1970s, I think.) Unfortunately, an important part of Duncan's work in this field remains unpublished. Some of his results were going to make it to the 2nd volume of his Growth and Distribution, but I have no idea what happened to the completion of that project. (I recently lost track of one of his old unpublished manuscripts while transferring my files from computer X to computer Y, so I had to ask him to resend it to me, and -- based on the comments in his reply -- I believe he still considers that work to be on solid footing. Yet, no hint on whether he's going to polish and publish that stuff anytime soon.)
One thing is that Duncan, aside from his own research agenda and teaching, is extremely busy (and immensely helpful!) as an extra-mile mentor, pushing students through their dissertation traumas. The guy has a depth of warmth and humanity that endears him to his students. I was lucky to take his advanced political economy courses while at the New School (and sat in a number of other courses that he taught and co-taught) and have benefited repeatedly from his advice and feedback. Again, the guy is very reliable as a mentor. You send him a manuscript and, if he accepts it, he'll read it carefully and send you great insightful feedback. He's always original and comes at things from unexpected angles (not always in ways that will connect with your own approach, but I guess that's why his stuff is so helpful). He has a very strong training in systems physics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, etc. (in the tradition of CalTech, Gell-Mann and Feynman, etc., more than MIT-style), hence his interest in structures and complexity. And the guy continues to absorb a lot of the new stuff being produced. E.g. he's been reworking inferential statistics and econometrics from the inside out.
Not sure, but I believe this was prompted by his contact with the late Salih Neftci and the enthusiasm among students in financial engineering and econometrics. As an academic compromise, Duncan was one of the promoters of the NS's master's in political economy and finance. (I sat in Salih and Duncan co-taught course on dynamic optimization and I believe that sparked his interest.) Although I remain deeply dissatisfied with his arguments, I continue to follow that work as I believe that something good is going to come out of it.