"Edward Hugh, Economist Who Foresaw Eurozone’s Struggles, Dies at 67"

The last Demography Matters post of 2015 noted the sad death of co-blogger Edward Hugh, and the first post of this year shall note Landon Thomas Jr.'s obituary for Edward in The New York Times. A sampling:

“For those of us pessimists who believed that the eurozone structure was leading to an unsustainable bubble in the periphery countries, Edward Hugh was a must-read,” said Albert Edwards, a strategist based in London for the French bank Société Générale. “His prescience in explaining the mechanics of the crisis went almost unnoticed until it actually hit.”

As the eurozone’s economic problems grew, so did Mr. Hugh’s popularity, and by 2011 he had moved the base of his operations to Facebook. There he attracted many thousands of additional followers from all over the world.

If Santa Claus and John Maynard Keynes could combine as one, he might well be Edward Hugh. He was roly-poly and merry, and he always had a twinkle in his eye, not least when he came across a data point or the hint of an economic or social trend that would support one of his many theories.

His intellect was too restless to be pigeonholed, but when pressed he would say that he saw himself as a Keynesian in spirit, but not letter. And in tune with his view that economists in general had become too wedded to static economic models and failed their obligation to predict and explain, he frequently cited this quotation from Keynes:

“Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.”

In memoriam Edward Hugh

I was shocked to learn this afternoon of the death, in Girona, of Demography Matters' founder Edward Hugh. Alas, the obituary written by Xavier Grau and published in Ara is, sadly, undeniable. The world is missing a wonderful man.

Wikipedia's summary of his life serves as a perfectly adequate introduction, and reminder, to the man and his work.

Edward Hugh, dubbed by The New York Times as "the blog prophet of Euro zone doom" was a Welsh economist based until his last days in Catalonia, Spain, where he lived since 1990. He spoke French, Catalan, Spanish and English.

Born in Liverpool, Edward Hugh, who "attracted a cult following among financial analysts", studied at the London School of Economics but was drawn more to philosophy, science, sociology and literature. His eclectic intellectual pursuits kept him not only from getting his doctorate but also prevented him from landing a full-time professor’s job.

By inclination a macro economist, his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes often took him far from Economics and towards fields like demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. In particular his work was centred on the study of demographic changes, migration patterns, and the impact of these on economic growth.

In 2014 he published his first book entitled "¿Adiós a la Crisis?". He wrote the book in Spanish and it discusses the economic situation in Spain.

He worked on a book with the provisional working title "Population, the Ultimate Non-renewable Resource".

News of his death has spread quickly in the online communities where he was so actively until recently, on Twitter and (in the blogosphere) at A Fistful of Euros thanks to PO Neill.

As a long-time co-blogger and collaborator, all I can say right is that I will miss Edward. He was a man with a vision, a particular understanding of the way the world had developed and would develop, that merited sharing. On a more personal level, Edward's encouragement to me as a blogger and writer remains cherished.

He will be missed.