Wells, Paul J.

YEARS IN THE DEPARTMENT:

1957-1993

RESEARCH INTEREST:

Monetary Policy, Macroeconomic Theory

BIOSKETCH:

Paul John Wells was born December 19, 1925 in Seattle. He attended the University of Washington as an undergraduate, and upon graduating enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in World War II. When the war ended, he went to Stanford University where he earned his doctorate in economics in 1958. Wells then began his career as an economist for the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

After a short stint on the faculty of California State University – Los Angeles, Wells joined the University of Illinois in 1957 where he would go on to teach for 36 years. During his career, he wrote countless articles as well as two books on economics. Wells served as the editor for the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, and published a textbook on the same subject in 1995.

During his tenure at Illinois, Wells earned recognition from his fellow economists around the globe. In 1966, he spent a year at Thammasat University in Bangkok, where he helped create a graduate program in economics, political science, government, and accounting. Wells also spent multiple years as a visiting professor, and taught at Stanford, the University of Hawaii, and Simon Fraser University near Vancouver.

One of the issues Wells advocated for the most was a massive reduction in military spending. Wells argued that the high levels of spending did not make sense since conventional weapons could do nothing to stop a nuclear strike by the Soviet Union. “We have spent $2 trillion dollars and we have no defense against destruction whatever,” Wells said during a lecture at the University YMCA. “If the military industrial complex were the football coach it would be fired.”

Additionally, Wells was a founding member of the Illinois Alliance Against Nuclear Arms, and was a major proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1980, he took a sabbatical leave to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the MX missile system proposed by the Reagan administration. Wells would retire from the University in 1993, becoming Professor Emeritus. Paul J. Wells died on June 10, 1998, at the age of 72.

PHD:

Stanford University, 1957

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Wells, Paul J. Post-Keynesian Economic Theory. Boston (Mass.): Kluwer, 1995. Print.
Wells, Paul J. Aggregate Economic Analysis: an Intermediate Exposition. New York: Ronald Press, 1971. Print.
Wells, Paul J. Money, Flexible Prices, and Employment. Urbana, Ill.: College of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1972. Internet resource.

VITA: