<p>It is great that Columbia’s Econ department is heading back towards the preeminence it had before the 1960s student riots. They are certainly building on a strong base of faculty luminaries, including Glenn Hubbard (strictly speaking in the Business School, but close enough both intellectually and physically), Jagdish Bhagwati, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, besides the cantakerous Joe Stiglitz. </p>
<p>What do people think, though, about the Jeffrey Sachs hire? It was certainly an expensive one for Columbia, and appeared to be a brilliant move at the time; do people still think Columbia got the right bang for the buck?</p>
<p>It is worth noting that over the same period, NYU downtown snagged Tom Sargent and Bob Engel.</p>