Page 100 - A Life Well-Lived Is a Beautiful Memory

My Dear Friend,

Bhanupong

Corina Gochoco-Bautista Corina and Bhanupong at AEP meeting, Seoul, October 2022.
25 February 2024 A picture he asked to be taken.

I don’t exactly remember when I first met Bhanu, but I am sure that it was at an AEP meeting
some two decades ago. My husband met him first when they were both involved in a book project
with Lance Taylor in the early 1990s. Bhanu and I became among the closest of friends in the AEP
family. We would almost always be found seated next to each other at the meetings (unless we
were assigned seats not next to each other) and we would always sit next to each other at the AEP

dinner at the end of the first day of the meeting. I have many photos of us, especially during the
AEP dinners over the years. Together with Chandra Athukorala and Yuki Abe, we were probably
regarded as AEP’s Gang of Four.

It was always a marvelous experience to see Bhanu in action as a discussant of a paper. He
was very big on first checking if the author displayed some common sense, as seen in the hypothesis
the author put forward and tried to test. Bhanu would check on the empirical methodology and
inferences supposedly obtained from the study. He was meticulous about pointing out errors in
the econometric methodology used. He would be particularly irked by authors who tried to appear

intelligent by using fancy econometrics yet made no sense. His training in both econometrics and
macroeconomics was so solid that it did not matter what fancy econometric techniques the Gen Z
generation of authors used. He would systematically break down the econometric methodology

and if incorrect, would suggest the correct one, or otherwise point out insurmountable issues
which would render the study unsalvageable. He did all this in his usual mild manner and in a
non-condescending way, even as he was very passionate about making his points.
In true Bhanu fashion, as late as about a year before he passed, he sent me an email dated
5/10/2022 on something he had read related to the 2022 presidential election in the Philippines.

The title of his email was “Marcos = 2.074* Leni + a,” referring to a regression supposedly

100 A Life Well-Lived Is a Beautiful Memory