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Leontief
Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought
The
Leontief Prize, in memory of Wassily Leontief, is designed
to recognize outstanding contributions to economic theory
that address contemporary realities and support just
and sustainable societies.
Read
the Announcement of the 2006 Leontief Prize to be awarded
to
Samuel Bowles and Juliet Schor on October 5, 2006:
“Economics for an Imperfect World: Building on
the Galbraith Legacy”
2005
Leontief Prize,"Rethinking Development in the
21st Century," awarded to Ha-Joon Chang and Richard
R. Nelson
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From left to right:
Dr. Chang, Tufts University
Provost Jamshed Bharucha, and Dr. Nelson.
Photo by Joshua Berkowitz. |
GDAE presented the 2005 Leontief Prize
to Richard R. Nelson, George Blumenthal Professor at
Columbia University School of International & Public
Affairs and Ha-Joon Chang, Assistant Director of Development
Studies at University of Cambridge Faculty of Economics,
on October 27, 2005 on Tufts’ Medford campus.
The award ceremony featured lectures by Dr. Nelson and
Dr. Chang on the theme, “Rethinking Development
in the 21st Century: Globalization, Innovation, and
the Role of the State.”
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| Prof. Nelson giving
his remarks. Photo by Jeff Chen of Tufts Daily.
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Professor Richard Nelson
was honored for his pioneering theoretical and empirical
work on the processes of long-run economic development
with particular emphasis on technological innovation
and evolutionary economic change. Dr. Nelson is the
author of The Sources of Economic Growth (2000),
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1985),
and the editor of The Limits of Market Organization
(2005) as well as many other important works.
Read
Dr. Nelson's remarks
Read
Neva Goodwin's award presentation to Dr. Nelson
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| Dr. Chang with his
family after the award ceremony. Photo by Joshua
Berkowitz. |
Professor Ha-Joon Chang,
received the Leontief Prize for his insightful work
on the role of the state in fostering development in
poorer countries, and on the problematic relationship
between economic globalization and development goals.
Dr. Chang’s books include Reclaiming Development:
An Economic Policy Handbook for Activists and Policymakers
(2004) and Kicking Away the Ladder: Development
Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). Dr.
Chang is also a contributor to Putting
Development First: The Importance of Policy Space in
the WTO and IFIs, edited by GDAE Researcher
Kevin P. Gallagher, just published in 2005.
Read Dr.
Chang's remarks
Read
Neva Goodwin's award presentation to Dr. Chang
Click
on the links below to read about previous Leontief Prize
award recipients:
2004
Recipients - Robert Frank and Nancy Folbre
2002
Recipients - Alice Amsden and Dani Rodrik
2001
Recipients - Herman E. Daly and Paul
P. Streeten
2000
Recipients - Amartya Sen and John Kenneth
Galbraith
History
of the Leontief Prize
Tufts
Institute Awards 2004 Leontief Prize to
Robert Frank and Nancy Folbre
Tufts University’s
Global Development And Environment Institute awarded
its fourth annual economics prize to Robert Frank, Professor
of Economics at Cornell University and Nancy Folbre,
Professor of Economics at UMass Amherst for their outstanding
contributions to economic theory. The awards were presented
at a ceremony at Tufts on Thursday, April 8th, where
the recipients answered the questions "Is
it inevitable that the rich get richer and the powerful
get more powerful in America? Will inequality increase
without limit? Can we envision a more just and equitable
society, and could there be practical policies to bring
it about?"
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Professor Robert Frank
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Robert Frank, author of Luxury Fever: Money and
Happiness in and Era of Excess and The Winner-Take-All
Society, explained the forces that drive the economic
system toward greater inequality and excessive consumption,
while Nancy Folbre, author of The Invisible Heart: Economics
and Family Values and The Ultimate Field Guide to the
US Economy, discussed how to promote a more humane and
cooperative economic system.
Professor Nancy Folbre accepting
her award from William Moomaw and Neva Goodwin
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Professor Folbre is well known
for her work exploring the interrelations of feminist
theory and political economy [see
text of Folbre's remarks]. She has
investigated the economics of gender and families,
and the importance of non-market production in
economic and social development. Her recent work
explores the reasons why the work of parents,
nurses, teacher others who provide “caring
labor” is undervalued and underpaid, and
how the situation could be remedied. She has also
been a leader in promoting popular economic literacy.
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| Professor Frank has
brought public attention to the social and economic
impacts of competition – in particular,
"positional" competition in which each
person strives to improve his or her position
in society relative to everyone else. The majority
of those who play this game will inevitably feel
like losers. Frank has also pointed to the wastage
in a “star” or “winner-take-all”
system, in which huge rewards motivate many to
compete for a few top positions, again creating
a large number of losers. Policies to limit these
kinds of competition would have the rare combination
of increasing both economic efficiency and equality,
while reducing human discontent. |
Professor Robert
Frank accepting his award from William Moomaw
and Neva Goodwin.
From left to
right: Robert Frank, Nancy Folbre, William Moomaw,
Neva Goodwin, and Fletcher Dean Stephen Bosworth
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Tufts
Institute Awards 2002 Leontief Prize to
Alice Amsden and Dani Rodrik
Tufts University’s
Global Development And Environment Institute awarded
its third annual economics prize to Alice Amsden of
MIT and Dani Rodrik of Harvard for their path-breaking
work on globalization and the role of the state in development.
The awards were presented at a ceremony at Tufts on
November 21, where the recipients spoke on the topic
of “Ruling Out National Development? States, Markets
and Globalization.”
| The
Global Development And Environment Institute (GDAE)
inaugurated the 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 is intended to
recognize economists whose work, like that of the
Institute and Leontief himself, is broadening the
field of economics to better comprehend urgent contemporary
issues. |
From left to right: Neva Goodwin,
Dani Rodrik, Alice Amsden, Bill Moomaw |
Amsden and Rodrik
follow two previous pairs as Leontief Prize winners.
The inaugural prizes were awarded to John Kenneth Galbraith
and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen. Last year, GDAE
recognized the work of development economist Paul Streeten
and Herman Daly, one of the founders of the recent field
of ecological economics.
From left to right: Neva Goodwin,
Julie Nelson, and Dani Rodrik
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“As
it becomes clear that the free market is leaving
many behind in the current wave of globalization,
Alice Amsden and Dani Rodrik are demonstrating
why the theories of free trade have not measured
up to their promises,” said GDAE co-director
Neva Goodwin. “Their rigorous empirical work
and profound understanding of economic development
is appropriately recognized in an award that bears
Leontief's name.” [see
text of Goodwin's remarks]
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Alice Amsden,
the Barton T. Weller Professor of of Political Economy
at MIT, is perhaps best known for her recent work on
the role of the state in newly industrializing countries.
[see text of Amsden's
remarks] Her 2001 book, The Rise of
“the Rest”: Challenges to the West
from Late-Industrializing Economies, highlights
the importance of an active state in promoting industrialization,
a perspective that challenges many of the tenets of
mainstream development institutions.
| Dani
Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy
at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government,
has written extensively on the globalization process.
[see text
of Rodrik's remarks] His empirical
work on the impacts of tariff reductions and financial
liberalization on developing country economies revealed
a track record of economic achievement that was
much more limited than had previously been acknowledged.
His recent books include Making Openness Work:
The New Global Economy and the Developing Countries,
and Has Globalization Gone Too Far? |
From left to right: President
Larry Bacow, Alice Amsden, Neva Goodwin, and Dean
Stephen Bosworth
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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
climate of vigorous intellectual inquiry among economists
and others on the Tufts campus has supported the Institute
in its work of policy-relevant research on globalization
and sustainable development, the role of the market
in environmental policy, recycling and material use,
and climate change. The institute develops textbooks
and course materials that incorporate a broad understanding
of social and environmental sustainability. Its six-volume
series, Frontier Issues in Economic Thought,
provides an accessible introduction to over 400 academic
articles on themes such as consumerism, human well-being,
the environment, and economic inequality.
Click
here for a corresponding article (Mentor
Nimani, MALD '03, from The Fletcher Ledger)
about the 2002 Leontief Prize .
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Tufts
Institute Awards 2001 Leontief Prize to
Herman E. Daly & Paul P. Streeten
(Akshay
Madhavan, MALD '02, from the Fletcher Ledger - November
19, 2001 issue)
On Tuesday, November
13, Dr. Herman E. Daly and Dr. Paul P. Streeten were
awarded The Global Development And Environmental Institute"s
(GDAE) Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of
Economic Thought. The prize is named after the famed
economist Wassily Leontief, who sought connections between
different disciplines and attempted to transcend a narrow
definition of economics. The award seeks to recognize
outstanding achievements that "address contemporary
realities and support just and sustainable societies."
The Leontief Prize was established in 2000, and its
first recipients were Dr. Amartya Sen and Dr. John Kenneth
Galbraith.
Fletcher Professor
Bill Moomaw (co-chair of GDAE) and Tufts President Lawrence
Bacow introduced Daly and Streeten with high praise
for the recipients" academic and professional achievements.
Dr. Neva Goodwin (co-chair of GDAE) [see
text of Goodwin's comments] also pointed out
that Daly and Streeten have both worked at the World
Bank, and have contributed to the attempts of the World
Bank to address issues of poverty and sustainability.
GDAE's latest publication, "A Survey of Sustainable
Development" is dedicated to the recipients of the
Leontief Prize.
| Dr.
Paul Streeten, Professor Emeritus at Boston University,
whose biographical highlights are lengthy enough
to serve as an independent article, addressed the
issues of environmental protection and sustainability.
[see text of
Streeten's comments] He posited that development
and environmental sustainability are in harmony
and not in conflict with each other (This presupposes
a proper, all-encompassing definition of development).
He stated that economic growth (measured as GDP)
should not be the end objective of societies, but
rather a by-product of thoughtful policy aimed at
improving the environment and ameliorating social
inequality. He divided all goods and services into
"goods", "bads", and "anti-bads" (goods produced
to counter bads). He then pointed out that societies
have four choices to enhance environmental protection.
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Dr. Paul Streeten |
1. Produce fewer
goods, consequently fewer bads (zero growth)
2. Produce more
goods, consequently more bads, and also more anti-bads
(the rate of growth then depends on how you count the
anti-bads)
3. Produce even
more goods and bads (high growth)
4. Produce different
kinds of goods, like environmentally friendly cars
Streeten emphasized
the need to go beyond the traditional view of the production
possibilities frontier. He concluded by distinguishing
soft sustainability proponents (those who want to maintain
the sustainability of outputs), from hard sustainability
proponents (those who want to maintain the sustainability
of inputs). He pointed out that Dr. Daly fell into the
latter category.
Dr. Herman Daly
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Dr.
Herman Daly, currently a professor at the University
of Maryland, addressed issues of scale economics,
environmental sustainability, and social equity.
[see text of
Daly's comments] He criticized neoclassical
economics for emphasizing economic scale, without
being concerned with the potential natural and
environmental scarcity and degradation. He contended
that economics ignores social equity and environmental
sustainability, and argued for a more thorough
study of the costs and benefits of actions rather
than merely the benefits.
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Daly
pointed out that macroeconomics is part of the ecosystem,
not an independent entity itself. Within this ecosystem,
he emphasized the need for social equity, claiming that
irresponsible economic growth may lead to "illth" and
not wealth. He called on wealthier countries to address
this problem with several redistribution (transfer from
rich to poor) and recomposition (transfer from private
goods to public goods) solutions. Daly criticized the
IMF, World Bank, and WTO for a one-dimensional view
of economic growth, without a consideration for the
equity and environmental impacts of such growth.
The most remarkable
aspect of both speeches was the speakers" willingness
to transcend the shackles of a uni-disciplinary approach.
Both Daly and Streeten are trained economists, but did
not hesitate to point to weaknesses in their discipline.
Their multi-disciplinary approach was a refreshing welcome
to addressing global concerns. It is for this reason
that they are deserving recipients of the Leontief Prize.
Such innovative ideas might be at the periphery of today"s
thought; undoubtedly it is at the frontier of future
thought and action.
Akshay Madhavan
was a Fletcher student. He was studying International
Environmental Policy and International Finance at Fletcher.
For further media coverage of the Leontief Event: http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu
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Tufts
Institute Awards 2000 Leontief Prize to
Amartya Sen and John Kenneth Galbraith
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| Amarty Sen
accepts the award from Neva Goodwin |
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GDAE Honors Sen and Galbraith with Inaugural "Leontief
Prizes" A standing-room-only crowd packed Fletcher"s
ASEAN Auditorium Monday evening to hear Nobel Prize-winning
economist Amartya Sen speak on "Global Development
in the 21st Century." The event also featured the
inauguration of the "Leontief Prize for Advancing
the Frontiers of Economic Thought," which was awarded
to Sen and John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith, who
is recovering from a fall, was unable to attend
but was represented by his wife, Katherine Galbraith. |
"Today we honor
several people who remind us that economics the so-called
dismal science can be a powerful tool in the hands of
those committed to overcoming the persistent inequalities
that plague our world," said Tufts' President John DiBiaggio
in opening the event. The president co-hosted the event
with Tufts" Global Development And Environment
Institute (GDAE), which created the Leontief Prize to
honor the memory of Nobel laureate Wassily Leontief,
who was a member of the institute's Advisory Board until
his death last year.
The gathering
also celebrated the publication of GDAE"s "The
Political Economy of Inequality," the fifth in the institute's
six-volume book series, "Frontier Issues in Economic
Thought." Referring to GDAE as "the little institute
that could" for it"s remarkable seven-year record
of publications, President DiBiaggio called the event
"an overdue public recognition of some remarkable contributors
to the intellectual life of our university." [see
text of President DiBiaggio's remarks]
But the spotlight
shone most brightly on economists Sen and Galbraith,
as well as Wassily Leontief. "Wassily had no patience
for beautiful abstractions without application," noted
Dr. Neva Goodwin, an economist who co-directs GDAE with
Fletcher professor William Moomaw. "His lifetime work
was based on an unwavering assumption, that the purpose
of economics is to be useful. Being useful meant making
it possible for human beings to interact with the physical
world in ways that would better the human condition."
Goodwin
presented the first award to Galbraith, lauding
him for his work on the problems of inequality
and consumerism and for "relentlessly describing
the world as he so perceptively sees it -- sometimes
leaving theory to come panting in his wake." [see
full text of Neva Goodwin's remarks]
"I regret
not being able to receive in person an award named
for Wassily Leontief, my old friend and admired
colleague, and one of the great figures in world
economics," Galbraith noted in his remarks, which
were read by Bill Moomaw. "We may never see his
like again." [see
full text of Galbraith remarks] |
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| John Kenneth
Galbraith |
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On the subject
of inequality, Galbraith decried the lack of attention
to the gap between rich and poor. His 1958 book, "The
Affluent Society," highlighted the divergence between
"private affluence" and "public squalor." In his remarks,
Galbraith poked fun at those in the economics profession
who would reject progressive taxation, referring to
such an approach as "the 'horse and sparrow' theory
of income distribution and its taxation: If you feed
a horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road
for the sparrows."
Dr. Goodwin then
introduced Amartya Sen, who is the Master of Trinity
College in Cambridge, England and Lamont University
Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Center for Population
and Development Studies. "Amartya merges the insights
of economics and philosophy through a combination of
rigor and humanitarian concern that have not been seen
since John Stuart Mill," noted Goodwin in presenting
him with the Leontief Prize. "He has insisted that economists
must care at least as much about equity as about efficiency,
[starting] from the questions: What is a good life?
How is it achieved?" [see
full text of Sen's remarks]
After thanking
GDAE for the award and for its "wonderful series which
is making a major impact," he spoke eloquently of the
significance of Leontief and Galbraith and their impact
on him. He lauded Leontief for his lasting contributions
to our understanding of industrial development.
Sen also recalled
being strongly influenced as a young man by Galbraith"s
"American Capitalism," which he remembered finishing
as he nursed a cup of coffee in a Calcutta caf. He referred
to Galbraith"s concept of "countervailing powers"
as one of his many overlooked contributions. "The idea
that one type of power may require other kinds of power
to help it stay in balance" continues to be relevant,
he noted, pointing out that the Soviet Union's transition
suffers today from the absence of institutional countervailing
powers to balance market forces.
Sen closed with
a discussion of development, stating that there are
no perfect models in the world. India, he said, is now
the world"s second largest producer of software
but still has nearly half its population illiterate.
Even the United States, he pointed out, has large segments
of its population suffering severe deprivation. He noted
as an example that while African-Americans have relatively
high incomes compared to people in most developing countries,
their life expectancy is lower, one of many "peculiar
dichotomies" in the United States.
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History
of the Leontief Prize (2000)
The Global Development
And Environment Institute established the Leontief Prize
in memory of Wassily Leontief, our friend and, from
1993 until his much regretted death in 1999, a member
of our external advisory board. It is designed to recognize
outstanding
contributions to economic theory
that address contemporary realities
and support just and sustainable societies.
Wassily Leontief
is best known for the single, powerful methodological
advance which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1973: the
invention of input-output analysis. In talking with
Wassily, and in reading his work, it was always clear
that he perceived his special contribution within an
even larger framework.
He was deeply
concerned that economics maintain a proper balance between
theoretical and empirical analysis. He cared a lot about
facts -- the visible wrinkles on the otherwise invisible
fabric of Truth. He had no patience for beautiful abstractions
without application: his lifetime work was based on
an unwavering assumption, that the purpose of economics
is to be useful. Being useful meant making it possible
for human beings to interact with the physical world
in ways that would better the human condition.
Leontief's most
concrete influence on the Global Development And Environment
Institute grew out of his ongoing relationship with
his natal Russia. He encouraged us to develop an introductory
economics textbook for that country, whose history has
in no way prepared it to use simple translations of
U.S. economics texts. With Wassily's encouragement we
worked with Russian economists, as well as with Kelvin
Lancaster and Thomas Weisskopf in the U.S., to provide
an introduction to market economics that takes account
of Russia's reality. The resulting textbook was published
in Russia in 2002, and has been revised for use in other
countries as well.
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