Douglas W. Mitchell *78

Douglas Mitchell, professor emeritus of economics at West Virginia University, died March 13, 2020, of complications from pancreatic cancer. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Doug attended high school in South Carolina, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Georgia Tech in 1974, and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton in 1978.

He was on the Temple University faculty for four years, at the University of Texas at Austin for three years, and at West Virginia University from 1984 until his retirement in 2003. At West Virginia he played a leadership role in the economics doctoral program, including as graduate director. He published 58 refereed papers in economics and four in cryptology. His economics papers spanned a variety of areas: positive macroeconomics, optimal macro policy, optimal control, banking, econometric methods, optimal portfolios, utility functions and choice under uncertainty, public choice, public finance, and commodity markets.

After retiring he lived in a number of places, including St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. During retirement he published 13 refereed papers in elementary mathematics and did extensive editing of Wikipedia in a variety of subjects, especially math and economics.

Doug is survived by his wife of 18 years, Duo Zhang.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.