My old friend and colleague Kevin Sontheimer has died. He was a great leader of Pitt’s economics department when I was there, not just while he was the department chair, but also before and after that too.
Here's his obit at Pitt:
Sontheimer transformed Pitt economics programs here and abroad
"Kevin Sontheimer, a 27-year faculty member who, as chairman, transformed the Department of Economics in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences and was instrumental in the founding of two pioneering international economics and management programs, died Feb. 3, 2025, at 86.
"His tenure as economics chair lasted through most of the 1980s. One of his early hires was future Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth as the first Mellon professorship at Pitt. “Kevin played a giant role in my decision to join the department in 1982,” Roth recalled. “He convinced me that, although the department had previously been somewhat under-resourced, it was a healthy department where it would be fun to work, with colleagues who would work together.
“And he was certainly right about that,” Roth continued. “During the time he was chair, we received permission to recruit fairly heavily, and successfully grew the department into a leading research department as well as a fine teaching department. I did some of the best work of my career at Pitt (1982-1998).
“One of the many things that Kevin did as chair was obtain a grant that allowed us to become one of the early economics departments to have an experimental laboratory. He built the department in other ways as well.”
"That included securing a Mellon Foundation grant to found, together with Jan Svenjar and Josef Zieleniec, the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE) at Charles University in Prague in 1991 (which became CERGE-EI in 1992, merging with the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences). He was also an instrumental part of the team from his department and the Katz Graduate School of Business to receive USAID grants to work with Academia Istropolitana Nova and other institutions in Bratislava, Slovakia, to set up their economics program as well as the program at Comenius University in Bratislava.
“Kevin was instrumental … a very, very important player in both of these efforts,” said Andrew R. Blair, professor emeritus of business administration and of economics at Katz and the College of Business Administration, and a close colleague of Sontheimer. “Kevin’s role in the Czech Republic and, most especially, the Slovakia relationships was absolutely vital to the success of these Pitt ventures in Central Europe, which were aimed at incorporating free markets in these countries after decades of operating under Soviet domination,” he added.
"While Sontheimer was economics chair, Blair was director of Katz’s International Business Center, and their cooperation was crucial in such efforts. Blair explained that Sontheimer in particular was “the driving force” behind the latter international program, “with Kevin serving both as co-director of the USAID grant implementation and also as resident director in Bratislava of the economics portion of the Comenius relationship. The idea was to train people who were already faculty members at these institutions, to teach with them over there, and to bring them over here” to Pittsburgh: “Without the grant we couldn’t possibly have done that.
“It was a pleasure to work with Kevin.”
"Kevin Charles Sontheimer was born on March 6, 1938, in Pittsburgh, earning his bachelor's degree in physics at Pitt in 1960, a master's degree in economics from Penn State University in 1963 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1969.
"He began his academic career on the faculties of Virginia Tech and SUNY–Buffalo, then joined Pitt in 1978 until his retirement as professor emeritus in 2006. He was economics department chair for eight years.
"His own research focus was on microeconomic theory, which led to publications in Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, as well as other leading academic publications in his field. He was also a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
"He is survived by his wife of nearly 65 years, Carol Sontheimer; daughter Leigh Ellen Sontheimer; son Erik Sontheimer and daughter-in-law Catherine Brekus; son Steven Sontheimer and daughter-in-law Morgan Triplett; grandchildren Claire, Rachel and Tanner Sontheimer; brother Adrian (“Dink”) Sontheimer and sister Sue Wilmot.
"A gathering to celebrate Sontheimer’s life will be held at a later date. Memorial gifts are suggested to the Alzheimer's Association or the Department of Economics at Pitt. "
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