Inside the Beltway

CSX Corporation Chairman John Snow (President Bush 's designate for Secretary of the U.S. Treasury) was a guest in Paul W. MacAvoy's class, "Corporate Strategies in Network Industries." Professor MacAvoy, a friend and colleague for about 28 years, invited him to Yale SOM to speak about the strategies of the major railroads.

Student questions posed to him ranged between railroad strategies, commercial regulation and corporate strategies that have to be developed under partial deregulation. Other questions about Snow's new government position arose, in particular, what it feels like to go from earning $10 million in an executive compensation package to $150,000. Students also wanted to know how he felt about being an autonomous CEO running the largest freight network in the eastern United States and now having to report to a boss in the Oval Office. They asked him how do you corale tens of thousands of civil servants to do new strategies in Treasury and to get the economy going?

Upon concluding his class, MacAvoy and Snow dined with Bill Brainard, William Nordhaus, Sharon Oster, Stephen Ross, Ivo Welch, and Yale President Richard C. Levin in the Clipper Room of Morries. It was a great opportunity for interaction with the Administration's new leadership and what might be considered neo-classical economists with strong views on stabilization policies and keynesian stabilization policies. Professor MacAvoy believes the new Treasury Secretary very much appreciated that opportunity and promised to keep in touch with the Yale School of Management.

Together, Snow and MacAvoy pulished three AEI Press books titled the "Ford Administration Papers in Regulatory Reform."