David Aschauer, who was an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Economics from 1983 to 1987, passed away unexpectedly on August 22, 2011 the day after he collapsed while swimming in the first leg of a triathlon in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He was 58 years old.

Since 1990, Aschauer had been the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Rochester, Aschauer held positions at the University of Michigan and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

“I'm very saddened to hear of David's passing,” said Scott E. Page, Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics, and director, Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. “As an undergraduate here I only took a couple of economics classes - Fusfeld and Aschauer. David was incredible. He was really into understanding how the economy worked and forcing us to think not just memorized. He pushed me to take graduate courses in economics while I was pursuing my PhD in math at Wisconsin. It was there I met Ken Rogoff, Buzz Brock, and John Rust and decided to become an economist.”

Aschauer's primary research field was macroeconomics. He conducted theoretical and empirical research on the impacts of government spending and deficits on macroeconomic activity in developed and lesser developed countries. At the time of his death he was conducting research on the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy in the United States as well as the relationships between real interest rates and real exchange rates in an open-economy setting. He had a developing research interest transitional macroeconomics, with a particular focus on Russia and Ukraine. His research is profiled in Who's Who of Economics: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Economists.

Aschauer's teaching areas were intermediate macroeconomic theory and policy, economic growth, money and banking, international macroeconomics, and advanced macroeconomics.

A service for David was held on September 17, 2011 at Bates College.