Professor and economist Keith Schwer runs the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, carrying out a mission to collect, analyze and disseminate information on the Nevada economy. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

This time of year, University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Center for Business and Economic Research Director Keith Schwer sometimes misses splitting logs and shoveling snow in the tiny Vermont village of Northfield, where he used to teach.

That's where he and his wife, Kay, originally settled, picking a typical, small New England village and college town, 12 miles south of Montpelier, the state capital, on the Dog River, to raise their three daughters.

Nostalgia notwithstanding, Schwer said he loves the daily challenge of bringing economic thought to bear on public policy. This is what lured him to the "dismal science" more than 35 years ago and later to UNLV.

Schwer cites a small book by John Maynard Keynes, "The Consequences of the Peace," to illustrate the importance of economics to the modern world.

Essentially, Keynes wrote that while the Allies won the war, they lost the peace with the Treaty of Versailles. He predicted in 1919 that the treaty made World War II inevitable because of its economic consequences for the former Axis powers.

During the Great Depression, Keynes wrote the ideas of economists, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.

"Indeed the world is ruled by little else," he wrote.

Schwer absorbed idealism during the heydays of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society from his professors at the University of Maryland. The professors included Charles Schultze, who was also a fellow at the Brookings Institution and later became President Carter's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

"It was very enlightening," Schwer said. "He shared his office with some (of us) students. He had a great ability to work with a lot of people. He'd buy you a cup of coffee and recount his conversations (with the great and near great).

"(Schultze) had a great sense of economics and its public usefulness. I think that's why I'm not just into teaching," he said.

Schwer is also into the business of turning economics into a contact sport and applying it to bettering public policy and society in Nevada.

Question: What do you do as the Center for Business and Economic Research director?

Answer: I direct the research program, which includes doing research myself. I carry out the center mission, set down when it was established by act of the state Legislature (in 1975), to collect, analyze and disseminate information on the economy of Nevada. A second objective was to support (economic) diversification. I'm the third director and by far the longest (serving).

Question: How do you direct research?

Answer: We have a very small staff. We have two research positions, mine and an associate, the same number as in 1975. We have a series of programs we have instituted which we do annually, such as the Las Vegas Perspective, a community survey and demographic profile. And we do economic outlook sessions for the community twice a year. Those are two big projects. We also do a series of monthly indicators. There are a whole series of projects we do on a monthly cycle.

In addition, other professors and students come in on a case-by-case basis and we have three people on staff who are paid from other sources. For example, we have Nevada Kids Count. That's through a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Question: Do you still teach?

Answer: For me, I teach what's most enjoyable. I don't have to teach, but I do because I believe that's what professors do.

Question: Why economics?

Answer: I wanted to be an architect, but discovered I didn't have the artistic talent. I took a price theory class, had a good professor and he suggested I apply for an assistantship. I did and I enjoyed the issues.

Question: Why did you leave Norwich for UNLV?

Answer: For the opportunity in Nevada. I think of new experiences and this filled my interest in policy questions. That's what drew me here.

Question: Of what are you proudest professionally?

Answer: I think the opportunity to work on many issues of importance that somehow otherwise wouldn't get addressed. For example, the Kids Count project, being able to put together data to help people better understand the importance of children to the future. They're going to inherit the future.

Question: You get a charge out of teaching students.

Answer: I do think if I'd stayed at Norwich with a much heavier teaching load I could see myself getting stale. In the classroom I can bring a lot of real-world things which other people aren't able to do everyday.

And I think that real-world perspective is important in the training of economists because there are a lot of real-world issues driven by economics.

Question: How are the feds falling short?

Answer: I thought there were two things I'd never see in my lifetime, the fall of the Berlin Wall and a balanced federal budget. Those things happened. But now we're seeing huge deficits. There are times to run deficits, but the failure to maintain fiscal responsibility, revenues and expenditures in closer balance, is creating economic problems for the future.

Question: What's a big concern at the state level?

Answer: Well, with respect to the state, one of the toughest issues is that people in Las Vegas don't appreciate Reno and Elko, or vice versa.

Question: What's a big concern for the community?

Answer: One deep and abiding concern in the community is the assimilation of so many people. One-third of the population has been here five years or less. The median term is 12 years. Seventy percent of the state's population is in Clark County. That's a huge change. I think the concern at the local level is all the people moving here, the people coming and going, the lack of community and the sense of local community.

Question: What would you change if you could?

Answer: Real-world applications addressing the big issues. I'm looking at the great difficulties in the world we live in. We should be addressing the big tasks about which economics is one of the big issues. In the university in the broad sense we should be educating people. There's heavy lifting to do and we're not going to do it by not challenging people to do what they haven't done before. John Stuart Mill said students never do all they can do until you ask them to do that which they cannot do.