John R. Meyer  John Robert Meyer (December 6, 1927 – October 20, 2009) was an American economist. He is credited with creating the field of transportation economics and was one of the pioneers of cliometrics. Born in Pasco, Washington, Meyer attended Pacific University 1945–1946, after which he served in the United States Naval Reserve 1945–1948. He received his B.A. from the University of Washington in 1950 and his Ph.D (David A. Wells Prize) from Harvard University in 1955. His dissertation topic—business investment decisions—coincided with that of a Harvard classmate, Edwin Kuh, leading them to merge both papers and publish it as "The Investment Decision: An Empirical Study" in 1957. He was a Junior Fellow from 1953–1955. He married Lee Stowell (1928–2003) December 17, 1949 and they had three children, Leslie Karen, Ann Elizabeth and Robert Conrad. Meyer was a professor at Harvard University's Department of Economics from 1955 to 1968, at Yale's Department of Economics from 1968 to 1973, and at the Harvard Business School from 1973 to 1983. He served and as the president of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) from 1967 to 1977, before the NBER was moved to Cambridge, MA. Meyer was a consultant to the National Transportation Policy Study Commission from 1977 to 1979. He served as vice chairman and board member of Union Pacific Railroad. He died on October 20, 2009 after a long period of battling with Parkinson's disease. At the time of his death he was the James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation Emeritus at Harvard Kennedy School. Meyer was open to interdisciplinary collaboration in his research. He combined engineering with economics. In order to understand the cost structure in the transportation industry he had to work together with engineers. After years of services in such endeavors, Meyer received the Roy W. Crum Distinguished Service Award in 2002. Meyer and three co-authors (Merton Peck, John Stenason and Charles Zwick) published "The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries" in 1959. This book conducted a thorough analysis of costs and demand which enabled the authors to study what the railroad industry might look like if it were better governed. Regulation of railroads had implicitly given incentivizes to passenger over freight trains. This made railroads less efficient and also less profitable because intercity rail’s great comparative advantage was in moving goods over long distances.