Vernon L. Smith

[laughs]

[laughs]And so Ben Bernanke said, "Oh, Bob Hall's looking for a research assistant." So I, I applied, and then I went in and talked to him, and he said, he, he looked at how I had done my first year, and he says, "Oh, you, you have a perfect record," [laughs] you know? And, um, and then I talked to him, and I'd been a research assistant as an undergrad, uh, to Ron Oaxaca, who's a well-known labor economist, and that was at University of Arizona, and Vernon Smith, an experimental economist who went on to win the Nobel Prize, uh, who had done all his work at University of Arizona.

So anyways, so Bob Hall was, you know, sufficiently impressed, and I was interested in the topic.

But another thing he said, this is funny, is he said, "So, you know, this is part of the Hoover Institution, and, you know, people sometimes worry about the politics and stuff." I said, "Oh, that's no problem." I said, "I'm from Arizona, and my father's to the right of Barry Goldwater, [laughs] so it's okay." So then that, you know, I got the job, and I was just delighted.