Part 1. Never give up hope, ye who enter here

I had been engaged in some difficult negotiations with the division of the MacArthur Foundation in charge of developing some new research networks in economics. They had asked me to co-chair a network on the family and the economy with Bob Pollak, and given us a planning grant, but then they didn't seem to like any of our ideas. I felt so discouraged and panicky at the thought that this opportunity would slip through my fingers. When I ran into one of the reviewers of our proposal at a conference and he actually sounded sympathetic, I promptly burst into tears, and had to retreat to the ladies room for about an hour of cold water treatment.

A couple of weeks later, with the network grant still pending, I got home from a dinner party to hear a message from Adele Simmons, then President on the Foundation, on my answering machine. "Please call me back any time before 11PM," she said. It was about one minute to 11. She had been very involved with starting up the research networks, and I was sure that she was calling to say that, regretfully, they weren't going to go ahead with the family and economy network. Let's get this over with, I thought, and dialed her number.

When Adele said they were going to give me one of their five-year fellowships, I was speechless. I couldn't even tell my partner for about an hour. It was like the final scene from a film I had recently seen, The Game. Michael Douglas, believing that he has killed his brother, jumps off a skyscraper in an agony of remorse. He lands on a giant airbag in the midst of a champagne celebration in which his brother, wearing a tuxedo, explains that it was all a game designed to promote personal growth and development.

Part II. How to Spend Money in a Hurry

What I like about economists is that they are interested in the nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty details of how and why money gets spent and what it accomplishes. In polite society this is sometimes considered vulgar economism. I have never functioned very effectively in polite society, so I will now answer the question that many people want to ask me: What are you doing with the money? The 5 Year Fellowship amounts to about $55,000 a year for five years. The optimal strategy for someone who hates their job and is economically insecure is pretty clear. Quit your job, buy a house and a car, and devote yourself to the work you really love.

However, I love my job and I already own a house and a car. I don't have any dependents that I have to send to college. Hence, I consider the Fellowship venture capital to be invested in projects that I think will yield the highest rate of return on my intellectual, political, and moral assets. Here's what I did in the first year: I bought off two courses to reduce my teaching load, and hired a recent U Mass undergraduate as a full-time research assistant . With his help (along with plenty of assistance from my partner Bob Dworak) I developed some educational websites and made progress on a couple of manuscripts that I have been working on for years, especially one called The Invisible Heart: Feminism and Family Values. I assembled a team of people to work on a book that I think is pedagogically important, titled The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy, and found a really great artist, R.J. Magill, to help illustrate it. I put together a small research team called The Gender Norms Project, or GNP, hired a research assistant and bought off one course for a colleague collaborating with me on it, Lee Badgett. I donated some money to two causes that I have worked on for years and continue to believe are really important, The Center for Popular Economics, and the journal Feminist Economics. I also contributed to an ad-hoc fellowship fund called the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Memorial Prize for Research on Caring Labor, which was awarded to Julie Nelson.

In the second year of my fellowship, I was scheduled for a sabbatical. The Fellowship allowed me to take the entire year off without going through the hassle and angst of applying for support elsewhere. It also enabled me to accept an invitation to visit at Australian National University for two months, which covered my own basic expenses, but not those of my partner. I have had an extraordinarily wonderful time in Canberra (where I am as I write this) and have done some great networking with economists in Melbourne and Adelaide as well. I continue to support the Gender Norms project at a distance, and am also planning some research using Australian time use data. In February, I'm taking a vacation. I have paid Earthwatch a big chunk of money (approximately equal to the cost of a week at Club Med) for the privilege of going to Costa Rica for ten days, sleeping in a bunk and working on a sea turtle research project. Our task is to walk the beaches at high tide in the middle of the night looking for nesting turtles and hatchlings. (I'm not yet clear on what we'll do to them!) I've been reading up on sea turtles, and am fascinated by the role that debates over their protection from shrimp fishing played in the recent protests over the World Trade Organization.

Part III. Does Money Buy Happiness?

For the answer to this question, you will have to read The Invisible Heart when it comes out (if I can ever finish my negotiations with/for a publisher). Money certainly buys a lot of good things and I remain strongly in favor of it. But, as you might guess, the really big boost from winning a prize is a boost of confidence, and boldness, and license to be less risk averse. I wish we could do more thinking about the relationship between material and psychological constraints. Few of us really like the old tried and true formulas for academic success, but it's hard to see alternatives to them. Even in my most exuberant moments I often hear this nagging voice asking "will you get a publication out of this" or "can you get this into a really good journal" or "do you really think you're an economist?" I imagine stuffing the nag's mouth shut with money so she can't speak. But there are probably better ways to get her to quiet down.