Alfred Kahn, the former head of the Civil Aeronautics Board and widely acknowledged godfather of U.S. airline deregulation, died Dec. 27 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y., at age 93.
A renowned economist, Kahn was a vocal opponent to government control of industry, and in 1971, while a professor at Cornell University, published “The Economics of Regulation,” a two-volume work that included a call to deregulate U.S. aviation.
That book, and his relaxation of local government control of electric, gas, telephone and water companies during his tenure in the mid-1970s as chair of the New York Public Service Commission, led to his appointment in 1977 as chairman of the CAB, and a mandate from President Jimmy Carter to overhaul the country’s airline industry.
A year later, Congress passed the U.S. Airline Deregulation Act, a law that released the industry from overt government control. In 1997 Aviation Week recognized Kahn’s work by awarding him the L. Welch Pogue award, which is presented to an individual considered a visionary and a preeminent leader of contemporary aviation.
Although best known for this achievement and as Carter’s “inflation czar,” Kahn was heavily involved in other industries, and had a passion for communications and energy policy. Recently this extended to net neutrality, the contentious issue of how consumers should access the Internet, where he argued that providers should be able to charge for different types of access.
Born Oct. 17, 1917, in Paterson, N.J., Kahn received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from New York University in 1936 and 1937, respectively, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1942. In the early 1940s, he worked at the Brookings Institution, the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the War Production Board as an economist.
Kahn began his teaching career at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., and in 1947 he joined Cornell University, rising to dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Cornell Board of Trustees. He was an emeritus professor of political economy at Cornell when he died.
According to Cornell, Kahn died of cancer. He is survived by his wife, Mary, and three children.
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