I think it was Eric Dluhosch, my colleague from MIT, who first suggested I get in touch with the International Building Council, or CIB in its French acronym. Eric knew Gyula Sebestyén, the Secretary General of CIB, the largest international organization dealing with building research in all its guises. When I wrote to Gyula about my interest in building economics, which I was teaching at MIT at the time, he wrote back that the next symposium of the CIB Working Commission W55, Building Economics, would take place in Ottawa, Canada, in a few months. He put me in touch with Klara Szöke, the Coordinator of W55, and I registered for the symposium. This was in 1984. It was too late for me to submit a paper, but I was still eager to meet others interested in my field, which was rather poorly developed in the US.

However, I was sorely disappointed at the symposium itself because building economics was actually dominated by quantity surveyors from the British Commonwealth. The field was closer to accounting than to economics. I went through the proceedings of the symposium, which must have contained about fifty papers at least, and found no more than a few references to economics proper. I asked to speak about my findings in general discussion. I introduced myself by name and affiliation, both of which had a certain zing to them, and I proceeded to demolish building economics as a mere misnomer in front of some two-hundred building economists from around the globe.

Many of the people present were simply stunned by my brash performance, but a few were delighted. They, too, had enough of quantity surveyors but had not felt like confronting them head on. One of them was Harold Marshall, a fine American economist close to Klara. She did not waste much time to ask me to join her Working Commission and become one of the keynote speakers at the next annual gathering, scheduled for Edinburgh.

I have been with W55 ever since. Over all these years I have missed only one meeting, which was held in Salford in the United Kingdom two years back. More, a few weeks ago I was nominated to serve as the next Coordinator of the Working Commission, a post I had declined twice before, but which I accepted this time because it is high time to make building economics a bona fide field of economics rather than a side-show. Sometime in November of this year the CIB Board will decide on my nomination, and it is quite likely I will be accepted.

All of this came to my mind earlier today because I remembered how my future British colleagues reacted to my mad courage in Ottawa in 1984. Confused, bemused, and perhaps even ever-so-slightly worried, they asked me all sorts of personal questions to better place me. I remember that one of the most curious fellows was Peter Brandon, whom I recently bashed in public in connection with his rôle in the government’s assessment of the research activity of university departments dealing with the built environment. At any rate, sixteen years after I joined W55, I am in position to change it quite radically. Confused, bemused, and perhaps ever-so-slightly worried, my British colleagues have seen nothing yet.

Addendum I (August 13, 2016)

As expected, I became the Coordinator of the International Building Council’s Working Commission W55, Building Economics, in November 2000. However, I served in that capacity through October 2002, which amounts to a bit less than a couple of years. Alas, I almost died when I fell in the Alps in July 2001, and I decided to retire while I was still convalescing a few months later. By September 2003, I retired for true. To this day, I feel contrite about my unfulfilled promises concerning building economics. Or construction economics, to use a bit more resounding term. I left the field before I could change it for good, as I had hoped for years.

My regret is more than obvious from my response to a festschrift I received in July 2006 (“In Response to the Festschrift: A Letter to Construction Management and Economics,” December 10, 2006). Over the years, I promised a great deal, but I delivered relatively little, at least by my own standards. In retrospect, my greatest regret is that I failed to provide sturdy foundations to building or construction economics. And the field is sorely lacking such foundations to this day. The way the world is shaping, chances are that the opportunity is quickly fading, too.

To my chagrin, I have had no followers in Austrian economics, which struck me as the most promising cradle for building economics. None whatsoever. Although I have a number of followers in construction economics, where input-output analysis is still providing a cradle of great promise, I cannot detect theoretical developments required for a lasting endeavor. Not to beat around the bush, my followers appear to be lacking balls. In short, the title of this piece has turned out to be nothing if not prescient. Nothing yet, indeed. What was originally meant as a prank of sorts has turned into a bitter reality in a bit more than a decade later.

Addendum II (January 23, 2020)

Two decades ago I published a collection of more than twenty of my papers in input-output analysis and construction economics. Entitled Economic Structure and Maturity: Collected Papers in Input-Output Modelling and Applications, it came out in 2000 under the imprint of Ashgate from Aldershot in Hampshire, United Kingdom. The book has been close to my heart because it contains quite a few of my best papers, the first one of which is my doctoral dissertation from 1975, which was first published in 1977 in Economic Analysis, the top economic journal in Yugoslavia at the time. Another appeared in 1984 in Quarterly Journal of Economics, a leading journal in the field of economics, and yet another appeared in 1988 in Journal of Regional Science, a leading journal in regional economics.

As I learned a fortnight ago by searching the World Wide Web for some of my work, the Ashgate book had reappeared in electronic format in 2018 under the imprint of Routledge from Abingdon in Oxfordshire, which is part of Taylor and Francis publishing group from London. As it turned out, Ashgate was acquired by Taylor and Francis in 2015. Taken aback by all this information, I immediately contacted Taylor and Francis via electronic mail. I wanted to know why was I not informed about the new edition, which could have benefited from my involvement, and what had happened with my royalties since 2003, when I retired from the University of Reading as an emeritus professor.

After quite a bit of trying, I managed to get in touch with the right person in Taylor and Francis. We quickly agreed on the way forward, as well. Although the publisher would not accept any new chapters to the book, for it was only reissued rather than republished, they accepted my new introduction. Counting about eight-hundred words, it rounds off my work in construction economics with input-output analysis as the main tool. Most important in this context, I argue that input-output analysis of the construction sector that I initiated is essential for economic policy dealing with climate change and environmental degradation, which faces the world at this time. And I point out that building dykes and dams, drainage and irrigation systems, protective sea walls, solar and wind energy collectors, as well as an appropriate transportation infrastructure, is unthinkable without a major contribution by the construction sector. This is where my book will hopefully provide the foundations for new thinking about the way forward, I conclude.

This is my greatest hope at this point in time, indeed. Construction economics needs sturdy foundations, which input-output analysis undoubtedly provides. As I argue in the new introduction, it offers many a key to the understanding of the place of construction in economic development. This sector plays a vital role in newly industrialized countries, such as China or India. At this stage of economic development, input-output analysis is crucial for understanding the place of new construction in a country’s economic structure. It is highly interdependent with other sectors. The same is true of developed countries, such America or Britain. Maintenance and repair construction are at the core of mature economies. The construction sector changes as economies mature, and it offers a useful indicator of an economy’s advance in economic development.

In short, the reissue of Economic Structure and Maturity in electronic format by Taylor and Francis offers new hope for construction economics. With some luck, my hopes expressed in the original piece may come to fruition, and especially in countries such as China and India, which are currently going through unprecedented economic development. The only remaining question is how much time is left to the human species to address climate change and environmental degradation. Forever an optimist, I may be putting too much hope into the rebuilding of this overpopulated and underdeveloped world. Alas, if only such a policy was undertaken soon after the end of World War II, if not even earlier!