Stockholm, Oct 08: The theories of how countries
maintain global trade, why natural rates of unemployment
are driven by economic necessity and even `Ricardian
equivalence,` which dictates that governments
cannot increase demand by deficit spending are
the complex topics that may be honoured with the
Nobel economic prize.
Like the traditional Nobel science prizes - medicine,
physics and chemistry - there is no precise formula
for predicting the decision by the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences.
Perennial contender Jagdish Bhagwati, a noted
proponent of free trade and critic of opponents
of globalization, is listed by Thomson Scientific
as a likely winner. The Indian-born Columbia University
economics professor was an external adviser to
the World Trade Organisation and served as a special
policy adviser on globalisation to the United
Nations.
Other likely winners include Paul Romer of Stanford
University, who won the 2002 Horst Claus Recktenwald
Prize in Economics. He`s been touted for his efforts
in developing the New Growth Theory, which has
provided new foundations for businesses and governments
trying to create wealth.
The theory was developed in the 1980s as a response
to criticism of the neoclassical growth model.
Thomas J Sargent of New York University, a leader
of the rational expectations theory, which is
used to determine future events by economic acts,
is also mentioned.
The economics prize, worth USD 1.4 million, is
the only one of the Nobel awards not established
in the will made by Nobel 111 years ago.
Jagdish Bhagwati, currently a University Professor
at Columbia University and Senior Fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, was born in
1934 and raised in India . He attended Cambridge
University where he graduated in 1956 with a
first in Economics Tripos. He then studied at
MIT and Oxford, returning to India in 1961 as
Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical
Institute, and then as Professor of International
Trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned
to MIT in 1968, leaving it twelve years later
as the Ford International Professor of Economics
to join Columbia . Until 2001, he used to be
Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Professor
of Political Science at Columbia . Professor
Bhagwati has also served as Economic Policy
Advisor to Director-General, GATT (1991-1993)
and as Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization
(2001). Currently, he is an External Adviser
to the WTO and a member of UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan's High-level Advisory Group on the
NEPAD process in Africa.
Professor Bhagwati has published more than
three hundred articles and fifty volumes. He
is regarded as one of the foremost international
trade theorists of his generation. Three festschrift
volumes of essays in his honor have been published
in the USA, the UK, and the Netherlands.
Five volumes of his collected scientific essays
have been published by MIT Press to date. His
early books, India: Planning for Industrialization
(with Padma Desai, 1970) and India (with T.N.
Srinivasan, 1975) are acknowledged to have provided
the intellectual case for the economic reforms
now underway in India. His recent book, India
in Transition : Freeing the Economy , was published
in 1993 by Clarendon Press, Oxford . Among his
books are: Protectionism (1988), an international
bestseller in several languages, and The World
Trading System at Risk (1991), both reviewed
extensively in the United States and abroad.
His latest books are Free Trade Today ( Princeton,
2002) and In Defense of Globalization (Oxford,
2004), both reviewed in leading magazines and
newspapers worldwide and translated into several
languages.
Professor Bhagwati also writes frequently for
The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal
, and The Financial Times . His writings on
public policy have been published by MIT Press
in two successive volumes: A Stream of Windows:
Unsettling Reflections on Trade, Immigration,
and Democracy (1998) which won the prestigious
Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing;
and The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington
Mismanaged Globalization (2001), both volumes
reviewed extensively in newspapers, magazines
and journals worldwide. He has appeared frequently
on national television programs, including CNN,
BBC, MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour and the Charlie
Rose Show.
Professor Bhagwati has delivered many prestigious
lectures, among them the Frank Graham Lecture
at Princeton , the Bertil Ohlin Lectures at
the Stockholm School of Economics, the Harry
Johnson Lecture in London, the Eyskens Lectures
in Belgium, the Radhakrishnan Lectures in Oxford,
and the Prebisch Lecture at UNCTAD IX in Johannesburg.
He is a Director of the National Bureau of
Economic Research . He was advisor to India
's Finance Minister, now Prime Minister, on
India 's economic reforms.
He works with several NGOs in the US and India
. He is on the Academic Advisory Board of Human
Rights Watch (Asia) and was a member of the
Advisory Board of the Council on Economic Priorities
Accreditation Agency (which has created the
SA 8000 Standard for Corporate Social Accountability).
Professor Bhagwati founded in 1971 the Journal
of International Economics , the premier journal
in the field today, and Economics & Politics
in 1989.
Professor Bhagwati is a Fellow of the Econometric
Society and has been elected a member of the
American Philosophical Society, and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a Vice
President, and has been elected Distinguished
Fellow, of the American Economic Association.
He holds honorary degrees from several universities,
including, Erasmus (Netherlands) and Sussex
(UK). Among the awards he has received are the
Mahalanobis Memorial Medal ( India ), the Bernhard
Harms Prize (Germany), the Kenan Prize (USA),
the John R. Commons Award (USA), the Freedom
Prize (Switzerland), and the Frank E. Seidman
Distinguished Award in Political Economy (USA).
He is married to Padma Desai, the Gladys and
Ronald Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic
Systems at Columbia University and a scholar
of Russian and other former socialist countries'
transition problems. They have one daughter,
Anuradha Kristina, currently at Kennedy School
at Harvard and former Captain in the US Marine
Corps.
