Herbert D. Werner, an associate professor emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, passed away on Feb. 22, 2020. He was 87. Werner received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in 1953 and his PhD in Economics from the University of California-Berkeley in 1964. In the middle of his PhD studies, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served for two years with most of his time spent at Fort Eustis in Virginia.
He then returned to Berkeley and completed his dissertation under the supervision of Walter Galenson, a noted labor economist and economic historian. At Berkeley, Werner also worked in the Institute for Industrial Relations.
He was one of the earliest members of the Department of Economics at UMSL when he joined in the late 1960s after holding a faculty position at Lewis and Clark College for five years. His areas of interest included labor economics, particularly industrial and labor relations, and macroeconomics. He also had strong interests in urban economics and was a fellow of the Center for Metropolitan Studies, a research unit that eventually became the Public Policy Research
Center. As a fellow, he wrote several research papers and reports for local municipal governments.
Werner’s published research includes “The Age Discrimination in Employment Act Amendments of 1978 and Their Effect on Collective Bargaining,” published in Labor Law Journal in 1979, and “The Housing Market in Integrating Areas,” with UMSL colleague Joseph P. McKenna and published in Annals of Regional Science in 1970. After a long and successful teaching career at UMSL, Werner took early retirement starting in 1993, though he continued teaching throughout the 1990s. Thereafter, he remained actively engaged in the Department of Economics, stopping by to have lunch with colleagues and attending the annual alumni parties and picnics, as recently as September 2019.
A celebration of Werner’s life was held on Saturday, March, 28, at The Journey South County (6915 Weber Road, St. Louis, MO 63123). In lieu of flowers, the Werner family asks that donations in his name be made to the UMSL Department.