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UH-Manoa Economics: A Brief Modern History, 1962-2007
I : First Steps: 1962-1966
Professor Emeritus Robert Kamins dates the end of the early years of economics at UH-Manoa as the 1962-1963 academic year, when economics faculty with appointments in UH-Manoa's College of Arts & Sciences and in its College of Business Administration chose to affiliate with just one of the two colleges. The birth of the modern Department could not have been better timed: the 1962 election of John Burns as Governor of Hawaii, the 1963 appointment of Dr. Thomas Hamilton as President of the University of Hawaii, and a soaring state economy fueled by the euphoria of statehood and eager tourists embarking on their first flights on the first commercial jet planes ensured that President Hamilton's ambitious expansion plans for the University would receive due consideration, political support, and substantial funding from the State's new legislature.
 In late 1962 Governor John Burns appointed Professor Shelley Mark to be the Director of the State's Department of Business and Economic Development. (Only a few years earlier, Shelley had employed an undergraduate economics major and boxer from Japan--the future Professor Seiji Naya--as his research assistant.) A 1964 transplant from UCLA, Graduate Dean (and recognized economist) Wyzte Gorter recalled the many 9 pm phone calls "requesting" his presence at late night meetings at Washington Place (the Governor of Hawaii's official residence) to hammer out education, labor, taxation, and health care policies for the 50th state. It was during this period that the State of Hawaii began to use more intensively the services of the Economic Research Center (established in 1952) to study the economic foundations and implications of existing public policies and proposed reforms. It is certainly no exaggeration to claim that the active involvement of Department faculty in analyzing proposed and actual state economic policies has deep roots in this period.
Professor Tom Ige, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a student of Professor Richard Musgrave, a leading public finance specialist, was Department Chair in the early 1960s, while Bob Kamins, another economist specializing in public finance, served as Chair in the late 1950s. Among the young professors in the Department in the early 1960s was Ronald Hoffman, the older brother of the actor, Dustin Hoffman. Leaving the Department after four years, Hoffman moved to the Social Security Administration, to the Council of Economic Advisors, and then to UCLA Law School. John Weis, a brilliant but truly eccentric academic, began a series of visits to the Department in the early 1960s. He entered Department lore by arriving at faculty homes unannounced, hoping to be invited for dinner. First notice of his presence was usually the sight of an uninvited visitor foraging in the refrigerator, and large amounts of food and lots of food out on the counters. Just Professor Weiss foraging for food in another faculty home.
 A young associate professor, Ryuzo Sato, sought refuge from the anti-Japanese attitudes he encountered as a faculty member at the University of Washington and was quickly elevated to Department Chair after joining the Department in 1963. Like Tom Ige, Sato was a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a student of Richard Musgrave. He would serve as Department Chair for the 1964-1966 academic years, but would find an offer to join the faculty of Brown University during the following academic year too tempting to turn down.
II : A New Doctoral Program and a New Focus on Asia: 1966-1974
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