How I did not meet Chris Sims

When I was in Princeton giving a talk earlier this year I was told by my colleagues at ORFE that I should try to meet Chris Sims, because he was probably the best person in their Economics department to give me advice and feedback on my quest to mathematize the Minsky model for financial instability. My friends also mentioned that Chris was a perennial top contender for the Nobel prize.

Since I have always been clueless about my relative importance in the world, I promptly e-mail him asking if he would be available to meet (I also wrote a similar message to Paul Krugman - more evidence of how clueless I really am). Much to my surprise, Sims e-mailed me back the next morning suggesting a time and place for us to meet.

Alas, inexplicably my mail server was down that day and I only received the message several hours after the suggested time, together with a second message from Chris saying that it looked like "we did not make a connection".

I remember thinking to myself that day that if he was ever awarded the Nobel prize I would curse the McMaster mail server forever for robbing me the opportunity to meet him !