Tufts University just announced that it will award its annual economics prize to James K. Galbraith and Angus Deaton for their work on poverty, inequality, and well-being. See the announcement below, which also gives some background on the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Galbraith and Deaton are certainly worthy additions to an illustrious list of past winners, including Triple Crisis blogger Robert Wade.
GDAE will award its 2014 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Angus Deaton and James K. Galbraith. This year’s award, titled “Inequality and Well-Being in an Age of Instability,” recognizes the contributions that these researchers have made to the studies of poverty, inequality, and well-being. They have both played a critical role in bringing grounded empirical analysis to bear on topics in need of applied interdisciplinary research.
“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.”
The ceremony and lectures by the awardees will take place in the spring of 2014 at Tufts University; further details will be forthcoming.
2014 Awardees
Dr. Angus Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Dr. Deaton’s research areas include health, economic development, and the analysis of household behavior, especially at the microeconomic level. His current research focuses on the determinants of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty in India and around the world. His book, “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality,” is scheduled for publication in late 2013.
Read more about his work.
Dr. James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and a professorship of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the measurement and understanding of inequality in the world economy. He is the author of several hundred journal articles and six books, including “Inequality and Industrial Policy: A Global View” and “Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay.” His most recent book is “Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis” (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Read more about his work.
About the Leontief Prize
GDAE inaugurated its economics award in 2000 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning economist and GDAE advisory board member Wassily Leontief. The Leontief Prize 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. Since then, 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, Nicholas Stern, Martin Weitzman, C. Peter Timmer, Michael Lipton, Albert O. Hirschman (posthumous), and Frances Stewart.
Read the full full Announcement of the winners. (PDF)
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