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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