Amit Bhaduri and Diane Elson win the 2016 Leontief Prize

Tufts Global Development and Environment (GDAE) Institute announced the Leontief winners for next year. From the press release:

GDAE will award its 2016 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Diane Elson and Amit Bhaduri. This year's award, titled "Development and Equity," recognizes the contributions that these researchers have made to economic understandings of development, power, gender, and human rights.

“As the free market and waves of globalization have left some peoples behind, Diane Elson and Amit Bhaduri demonstrate why the current theories of development have excluded the poor and disenfranchised from the growth process,” said GDAE Co-Director Neva Goodwin. “Their cross-disciplinary work and profound understanding of economic development is appropriately recognized in an award that bears Leontief's name.”

Read announcement here.

Angus Deaton wins the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

For his work on "consumption, poverty and welfare" according to the press release. It wasn't Atkinson, for inequality, as I suggested it was possible, but given the other possibilities cited this is quite good. Deaton had received last year the Leontief prize, which usually goes to heterodox economists (the other Nobel to win the Leontief was Sen), together with Jamie Galbraith.

I should say, I recently read his The Great Escape. An interesting book, full of relevant data. But it does maintain the conventional neoclassical view on growth. Supply side constrained, and dependent on investment in education (aka human capital), and the institutions to guarantee investment (e.g. property rights, rule of law). The Douglas North New Institutionalist view. In his words:

“possession of common knowledge does not imply that all countries should have the same living standards. To be able to use rich-country methods of production requires rich-country infrastructure—roads, railways, telecommunications, factories, and machines—not to mention rich-country educational levels, all of which take time and money to achieve. Yet the gaps between rich and poor provide plenty of incentives to make the investment in that infrastructure and equipment, and, as Robert Solow showed in one of the most famous papers in all of economics, average living standards should draw closer over time. Why this has not happened is a central question in economics. Perhaps the best answer is that poor countries lack the institutions—government capacity, a functioning legal and tax system, security of property rights, and traditions of trust—that are a necessary background for growth to take place.”

It does say something about investment in infrastructure, and one can read the need for money as an acknowledgment that the balance of payments is an important restriction (but that might be reading too much). So as most mainstream economists he seems to think that lack of convergence is somewhat of a mystery. He says: “puzzling is the failure of the poor countries to catch up.”

There are interesting things in his book anyway. He does say, for example, that:

“One key to African growth is what happens to commodity prices. Many African countries have long been and are still dependent on exports of 'primary' commodities, mostly unprocessed minerals or agricultural crops. Botswana exports diamonds; South Africa, gold and diamonds; Nigeria and Angola, oil; Niger, uranium; Kenya, coffee; Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, cocoa; Senegal, groundnuts; and so on. The world prices of primary commodities are notoriously volatile, with huge price increases in response to crop failures or increases in world demand and equally dramatic price collapses, none of which are easily predictable."

The preoccupation with commodity price volatility has a long history in economic development, but probably Raúl Prebisch and the economists at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have been the pioneers and the most persistent in emphasizing its relevance. That tradition, of course, emphasizes demand as the engine of growth, and the balance of payments as its main constraint in peripheral countries.

More importantly, Deaton seems to take the profession and even the Nobel prize with humor and skepticism. Again from the book: “The great economist and Nobel laureate James Meade used to complain that the three great disasters of the twentieth century were the 'infernal' combustion engine, the population explosion, and the Nobel Prize in economics.”

Krugman is not a real Keynesian

From The Boston Globe:

Keynes’s insights have enormous practical importance, according to Lance Taylor and Duncan Foley of the New School. Temperamentally opposite — Foley a brilliant theorist, Taylor a pragmatist influential in developing nations — they jointly received the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute on Monday. But isn’t Keynes now mainstream? No, say Foley and Taylor. The mainstream still sees economies as inherently moving to an optimal equilibrium, as Wicksell did. It still says demand causes short-run fluctuations, but only supply factors, such as the capital stock and technology, can affect long-run growth.

Read rest here. Not a surprise for the readers of this blog.

Duncan Foley and Lance Taylor win Leontief Prize

GDAE will award its 2015 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Duncan Foley and Lance Taylor. This year's award, titled "Macroeconomics in the Age of Climate Change," recognizes the contributions that these researchers have made to our understanding of the relationships between environmental quality and the macroeconomy.

“Our Institute’s work has been much influenced, and has greatly benefited, by the ways in which Dr. Foley and Dr. Taylor have crossed the boundaries between economics and other disciplines to produce the kind of rigorous analytical work that the Leontief Prize was created to recognize,” said GDAE Co-Director Neva Goodwin. “Dr. Taylor’s research has integrated relevant social relations into macroeconomic models, and is of critical importance for understanding present and future environmental realities and challenges. Dr. Foley’s unique approach to combining research on political economy with advances in statistics and a broad grasp of the relevant data has produced a deeper appreciation of the policy consequences of economists’ choices in theories and models.”

The ceremony and lectures by the awardees will take place in the spring of 2015 at Tufts University; further details will be forthcoming.

For more go here.

Galbraith and Deaton Leontief Prize lecture

Jamie Galbraith and Angus Deaton Leontief Prize lectures at the Global Development And Environment Institute (GDAE) last week. Deaton starts at minute 49 or so, and Jamie at around 1:27.

Jamie Galbraith wins the Leontief Prize

Jamie Galbraith, together with Angus Deaton, has won the 14th Leontief Prize. From the Global Development and Environment announcement:

“For too long many economists have viewed rising inequality as an inevitable consequence of economic development,” says GDAE Co-director Neva Goodwin. “But recent economic upheavals call for a new approach to understanding the causes and consequences of inequality. Angus Deaton has demonstrated that inequality is about much more than income differences, focusing on how inequality affects the health and well-being of societies. James Galbraith has shown that inequality isn’t an outcome driven by factors outside of our control, but instead is often a direct result of the policy choices we make.”

More here. Jamie's father was the first recipient back in 2000, together with Amartya Sen. For a full list of recipients go here.

2013 Leontief Prize

Wassily Leontief (1905-99)



Tufts University’s Global Development And Environment Institute announced today that it will award its 2013 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Albert O. Hirschman and Frances Stewart. This year's award, titled "Development in Hard Times," recognizes the critical role played by these researchers in crossing disciplines to forge new theories and policies to promote international development. The ceremony and lectures will take place on March 7, 2013 at Tufts University’s Medford campus.

“Development economics is experiencing a deserved revival, as developing countries increasingly seek to define the appropriate role for the state in a global market economy that is suffering upheavals from politics, economics, and resource constraints,” says GDAE Co-director Neva Goodwin. “A serious return to development theory must start with the work of Albert Hirschman, one of the early leaders in the field. Frances Stewart’s practical and theoretical work on the challenges of modern development further advance such interdisciplinary approaches to international development.”

The Global Development And Environment Institute, which is jointly affiliated with Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, inaugurated its economics award in 2000 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning economist and Institute advisory board member Wassily Leontief, who had passed away the previous year. The Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought recognizes economists whose work, like that of the institute and Leontief himself, combines theoretical and empirical research to promote a more comprehensive understanding of social and environmental processes. The inaugural prizes were awarded in 2000 to John Kenneth Galbraith and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.

2013 Awardees
Albert Hirschman needs no introduction to those in the field of development. He has been an eminent figure at Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, with which he is currently affiliated. He is considered a pioneer in the field of political economy in developing countries, with a long history of work in Latin America. He has always seen development as a process of creating economy-wide benefits for all, and he understands deeply the nature of “unbalanced growth” and the importance of fostering industrialization and innovation. He has authored some of the most insightful works in the social sciences, straddling economics, psychology, and political theory. His key works include National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (University of California Press, 1980 edition), The Strategy of Economic Development (Yale University Press, 1958), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Harvard University Press, 1970), and The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (1977). In 2007, the Social Sciences Research Council established an annual award in his honor.

Frances Stewart is emeritus Professor of Development Economics at the University of Oxford and was director of Oxford's Department of International Development and the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE). Her 1977 book, Technology and Underdevelopment (Macmillan) presents a comprehensive approach to technology choice, challenging neo-classical assumptions. Adjustment with a Human Face (co-authored with Andrea Cornia and Richard Jolly), published in 1987 was highly influential in challenging IMF approaches to adjustment. She has worked on the Human Development Reports of the UNDP since the first Report, and in 2009 was awarded the Mahbub ul Haq prize for lifetime contributions to Human Development. Her long-term project on poverty compares four different approaches – monetary, capabilities, social exclusion, and participatory – from both a theoretical and a policy perspective. Most recently she introduced the concept of “horizontal inequalities” (i.e. inequalities in economic and political resources between culturally defined groups) and has shown how such inequalities constitute a major cause of conflict. Her 2008 book, Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Conflict in Multiethnic Societies (Palgrave Macmillan) documents her rich interdisciplinary approach to development.

The Global Development And Environment Institute was founded in 1993 with the goal of promoting a better understanding of how societies can pursue their economic and community goals in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner. The Institute develops textbooks and course materials, published on paper and on its web site, that incorporate a broad understanding of social, financial and environmental sustainability. The Institute also carries out policy-relevant research on climate change, the role of the market in environmental policy, and globalization and sustainable development.

In addition to Amartya Sen and John Kenneth Galbraith, GDAE has awarded the Leontief Prize to Paul Streeten, Herman Daly, Alice Amsden, Dani Rodrik, Nancy Folbre, Robert Frank, Richard Nelson, Ha-Joon Chang, Samuel Bowles, Juliet Schor, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Stephen DeCanio, José Antonio Ocampo, Robert Wade, Bina Agarwal, Daniel Kahneman, Martin Weitzman, Nicholas Stern, C. Peter Timmer, and Michael Lipton.

Learn more about the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and view a list of previous award recipients
Learn more about the Global Development and Environment Institute
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