ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
WASHINGTON: The death on May 8 of Allan Meltzer, 89, deprives the United States of one of its most influential economists in the past half-century. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh since 1957, Meltzer played a crucial role in convincing much of the economics profession to abandon policies that led to rising inflation in the late 1960s and 1970s.