He strikes the theme of his pet metaphor again. "I just don't think of people in departments as bushels of wheat--I think of them as a family. Would we reach a social optimum if we reconstructed our wives every year--as some people seem to do?"

When Brown speaks about Harvard's Economics Department, his face furrows in frustration, and he peppers his conversation with sighs and shakes of the head. Griliches, on the other hand speaks of MIT's economics department with a twinkle in his eye and an incipient grin that turns from time to time into a light chuckle.

"Perhaps," admits Brown, "if I were doing the attacking, I would be much more relaxed than I am as the recipient of the attacks."

Griliches is less gentle when asked why he thinks various MIT professors are so up in arms about Harvard's recruiting efforts. "If they had received the offers themselves, perhaps they would not feel the same way," he suggests.

Bearing out his words, both Dornbusch and Fischer describe relations between Harvard and MIT economists as cheerful and cooperative.

"There's no doubt that relations are very friendly," says Dornbush. "There's no warfare of any kind, really. In fact, we almost got them to reschedule a class to meet out graduate students timetable."

Dornbusch stresses ways in which the two departments work together: open cross registration for graduate courses, joint seminars and workshops, and regular socializing among members of both faculties.

"It's difficult now to get the impression that there is a great rivalry with unpleasant overtures," he says. "As long as both excel in economics, we'll compete, do it nicely, and enjoy it."

Fischer also downplays suggestions of friction between the departments. "It's a complicated relationship, but there's no particular point in creating controversy where there isn't any."

* * *

Some professors date Harvard and MIT's rivalry in economics back to an unmistakable controversy in the early '40s when Paul Samuelson, then a graduate student at Harvard, was passed over for a faculty appointment at the University. At the time, widespread reports attributed Harvard's failure to hire Samuelson to anti-Semitism.

Samuelson accepted an offer from MIT's young, unspectacular department, and proceeded to dominate the field of economics as few other scholars have in the century. Almost single-dedly, he attracted a long string of outstanding graduate students and faculty members to MIT, most notably Robert Solow.

"It will take half a century for Harvard to recover from that anti-Semitism," Otto Eckstein. Warburg Professor of Economics, told Business Week recently. Part of that effort to recover has included regular tenure offers to Solow and Samuelson, reportedly including an offer of a University Professorship to Samuelson.

MIT economists do not count these efforts among objectionable Harvard raids on their department. "You'd expect every university in the country to be after Samuelson and Solow," explains Brown.

In general, Harvard and MIT do not engage in financial bidding wars over professors. The salary packages and benefits the two universities promise a scholar they hope to hire are not apparently the factors that govern an economist's choice.