Great Economists Research Articles

Assessment of Social Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh

In this paper, an attempt has been made to briefly highlight the fast emerging and widely spreading movement of social entrepreneurship (SE) in terms of its clear conception, past nature, present manifestation and popularity, alongwith a few examples of social enterepreneurs, the growth of SE organisation and their contribution to the society and humanity at large. The discussion is substantiated with the case of a well known SE organisation, viz, Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, where with sincere intentions but consistent endeavours, the Bank and its founder Prof. Muhammad Yunus, both Nobel Peace Award winners of 2006, have rendered their excellent social service, which neither governments nor corporate bodies could do. With over 2,556 branches, the Bank has made its services available in more than 84,388 villages (more than 97% of villages) during the last 33 years through a simple but very strategic economic mechanism, viz, micro credit or micro finance.While great economists and bankers confine such method to their seminars, speeches, books, interviews, etc., Prof. Yunus has brought it to the doors of those needy poorest in the rural areas and improved the quality of lives of over 7.6 millions of such marginalised population, by providing over $8.07 billion, despite several suspicions, constraints and criticism. Prof. Yunus identified one simple problem: People were poor because financial institutions had failed to extend credit to them. He sorted out this problem and succeeded in bringing happiness and civilised living to them through the power and practice of “social entrepreneurship”.

BAK Je-gha's Thoughts on Logistics and Overseas Commerce in The 18th Century in Korea: A Comparative Study of Those of Adam Smith and Korean Scholars

BAK Je-gha is one of distinguished Silhakjas (Korean pragmatic Confucianists) in the 18th century in Korea. The most important thoughts of BAK Je-gha lay in his words that properties could be increased by way of investment like a well and agriculture is like intestines and the wagon is like blood vessels in the human body. These are foresighted in that it nearly equals to Say's words; “supply can create demand itself”, and nowadays logistics cost can affect competitiveness of industrial enterprises. No one except BAK Je-gha gave an idea that government could increase its national wealth and power through home and foreign trade in Korea, though someone mentioned the importance of commerce. Even Adam Smith, contemporary great economist of BAK Je-gha, gave an emphasis on domestic trade rather than oversea trade, for he wanted to point out defects of mercantilism and to assert the advantages of free trade. He also explained that capitals are increased by parsimony. As seen above, BAK's thoughts on distribution and commerce had originalities in comparing with those of contemporary Korean Confucianists and even Smith, father of modern economics.

Marx to-day: capitalism and socialism (1925)

This relatively unknown and seldom cited text by the great American institutional economist John R. Commons if of interest not merely because of the issues mentioned in its title. It also illuminates Commons's analysis of custom, law, and the state. This introduction gives some biographical details and discusses some of the important features of this essay.

Doubling Our World's Economy

The record of long-term forecasting, particularly by economists, is not a glorious one. In a celebrated article, great English economist John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1930 about the economic possibilities of our grandchildren, forecast that in a century s time working week would be about 15 hours long, thus creating a serious challenge of how to use our extensive leisure. We have less than a quarter century to realize that result. The trends point in right direction, but are substantially off in magnitude. In early 1950s, Twentieth Century Fund published an ambitious projection of world economy to year 2000, in which it foretold a world population of 3.25 billion, up from 2.4 billion in 1950, and concluded that major future challenge would be how to feed so many people. In fact, world population in 2000 was about 6.1 billion, and average diet was significantly better than it was in 1950. And, of course, many forecasts of world energy demand were made after oil shocks of 1970s, most of which proved wildly

Society as a Complex Adaptive System

Originally published as Buckley, W. (1 968). Society as a adaptive system, in W. Buckley (ed.), Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist, Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. Reprinted with kind permission. Although the phrase complex adaptive is one usually thought to have been coined at the Santa Fe Institute sometime during the 1990s, we can see by the title of this classic paper that the systemsoriented social thinker Walter Buckley had already been using the phrase complex adaptive as early as 1968 and with pretty much the same connotations as it is used today. Thus, similar to how the phrase is contemporarily employed, Buckley explicitly crafted complex adaptive to counter an equilibriumbased, closed view of systems which he felt was endemic at the time of his writing this paper. The idea that the dynamics of social systems were dominated by an equilibriumseeking tendency had become entrenched in social thought ever since the great economist Vilfredo Pareto (who, interestingly enough, had also introduced early speculations on power-law type distributions which are so popular today in complexity circles) had enunciated it strongly in his early version of sociology in the late nineteenth century. For Pareto, as was true among most economists at the time (and, as hard to believe as it is, is still so), equilibriumseeking dynamics were at the core of economic theory (for a discussion of the idea of equilibrium-dominating in social and psychological systems, see Goldstein, 1990, 1995). According to Laurence Henderson (1935), himself an early general systems theorist from within the discipline of physiology (and from which Walter Cannon had derived his own notion of physiological homeostasis), Pareto's thesis at the Polytechnic School of Turin was on the mathematical theory of equilibrium in elastic solids. Pareto had it that a social system was bound by equilibrium, as in any mechanical system so constructed, which meant that the system would automatically return to its former state after any sort of perturbation of its key variables (within a certain amount; see the Appendix below for Henderson's mathematical formulation of this understanding of equilibrium). Henderson also indicated how close Pareto's equilibrium model of social systems was to the equilibrium model of physical chemistry put forward and made a keystone of that discipline Le Chatelier. It was against interpretations of social dynamics as being dominated by equilibrium that Buckley offered his inspired exposition of adaptive systems. Unlike a system governed by a propensity to return to equilibrium after being disturbed, and in so doing losing structure as entropy increased, Buckley's adaptive systems built-up structure as they adapted in the face of new internal and external interactions. Buckley's classic paper Society as a Complex Adaptive System (Buckley, 1968) can be seen as providing a useful bridge between the interests of complexity scientists and those of social entrepreneurs as they struggle to apply the concepts of adaptive systems to societal (social) change and innovation. The paper exemplifies the early sociological formulation of the concepts of complexity and system-adaptation in the context of social value creation and societal change. Buckley's career as an American sociologist spanned the micro-meso-macro social divides by bringing a pragmatic understanding to social contexts that both social entrepreneurs and complexity scientists will appreciate. In general, Walter F. Buckley (1922-2006) is considered a pioneer in the field of modern social systems, sociology, and sociocybernetics. His early academic career resulted in the publication of Sociology: A Modern Systems Theory (1967) in which he constructed a foundation for a very contemporary-sounding dynamic, morphogenic conceptualization of coevolving social structures that was not dependent on the ideas of equilibrium- or homeostasis-seeking processes. …

Intervention et laisser-faire chez Turgot (Le rôle de l'État selon le droit naturel)

Résumé Les historiens des idées écrivent souvent que Turgot et Adam Smith se contredisent puisque d’un côté ils avancent un "principe de non-intervention " tandis que d’un autre ils proposent de nombreuses mesures publiques. En fait, aucun de ces auteurs n’adhérait au principe selon lequel l’État "ne doit pas intervenir". Pour Turgot, le principe qui devait diriger l’action de la puissance publique était la "protection des droits naturels", pour Smith c’était la "promotion du bonheur de la communauté" ; la poursuite de ces buts exigeait que l’État intervienne dans certains cas et s’abstienne dans d’autres.

The Question of Justice in Taxation the Basics of Tax Reform in Terms of the Solidarity Concept of Heinrich Pesch, S. J.

Translator’s Foreward: About Heinrich Lechtape Heinrich Lechtape was born in Recklinghausen in the Westphalian sector of Germany on 31 May 1896. The family moved to nearby Munster in 1914, and when World War I broke out, Heinrich volunteered and served on the Russian front from 1915-1917. His health broke down, and he was returned to Germany. Following studies at the University of Munster, he subsequently served on the social-science faculty until he was dismissed by the Nazis in 1934. He died two years later on 16 January 1936, following recurrence of the lung ailment he had contracted as a soldier. During his brief academic career, Lechtape developed significant competence as a published scholar. He also visited the United States (1929-30), where he came in contact with various leading American sociologists. Meanwhile, the chaotic conditions in Germany following the war and the vindictive Versailles Treaty had a profound impact on his thinking. While some of his countrymen were persuaded by political currents from the Left and from the Right, Lechtape was impressed by the centrist ideas of the great Jesuit economist, Heinrich Pesch, then living in Berlin, with whom he also exchanged correspondence. As a sociologist, he was impressed by the notion of solidarity with its stress on the significance of the interdependence of people at all levels of society, from the family to the nation and beyond. That led to his publication of this work, Die Frage der Steuergerechtigkeit (1920), and also Der christliche Solidarismus nach Heinrich Pesch (1922). He left behind an outline for an impressive treatise on solidarity from the perspective of sociology, which unfortunately he could not complete because of his untimely death.

Prophet of innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and creative destruction

Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland - all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. Creative destruction, he said, is driving force of capitalism. Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as the most sophisticated conservative of 20th Century, Schumpeter made his mark as prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril - to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, general prosperity produced by capitalist engine far outweighs wreckage it leaves behind. During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, Great Depression, and early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by spectre of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983 - centennial of birth of both men - Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, best navigator through turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate. Prophet of Innovation is also private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman - and admitted to failure only with horses.

Authors’ Reply

We thank Dr Gundzik for his comments. Adam Smith, founder of the discipline of economics and the greatest economist who ever lived, famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Penalized by Quality: Medical Imaging Is Not a Free Market IndustryJournal of the American College of RadiologyVol. 4Issue 8PreviewI respectfully but strongly disagree with the arguments cited in the recent JACR column “The Perils of Protectionism” [1]. The proposals by the ACR and the imaging community to limit the performance and interpretation of imaging examinations by nonradiologists are not to protect radiologists from competition but rather to protect our patients from needless radiation exposures and inferior-quality examinations, as well as to protect our health care system as a whole from spiraling costs related to the overutilization of high-cost advanced imaging examinations performed by nonradiologists. Full-Text PDF

Why The Critics Of Globalization Are Mistaken

Being invited to give the Tinbergen Lecture is a privilege for any economist. But for me it is also a great pleasure as it brings back to me memories of, not just a great economist who won the first Nobel prize in Economics, but of a great humanist whose example affected me deeply. I first met him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when I was a student at MIT and he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard. He was kind enough to invite me, among other students, to his home for dinner. I recall his saying, with a sense of puzzlement rather than deprecation, that many of his Harvard students had come to him just before the final examination, and had asked him: When you put down dy/dx, why don’t you cancel out the ‘d’? Well, that could not have been a question asked by MIT students! Perhaps that was why, when Professor Paul Samuelson, my teacher and then colleague and now friend, wished us to understand why the Stolper–Samuelson theorem worked because the tradeinduced reallocation of resources changed the capital/labor ratios in both goods in the same direction, he said: imagine that the worst student at MIT flunks out and joins Harvard; the average IQ in both MIT and Harvard goes up. But my next meeting was more dramatic. I had gone as a youthful OECD “consultant” to work for 3 months in the Devlet Planlama Teskilati, Turkey’s Planning Commission, in 1962. There I was, staying at a posh hotel, earning ∗ This is the final text of the Tinbergen Lecture delivered to the Royal Netherlands Economic Association in Amsterdam in October 2006. The author is University Professor, Economics and Law, Columbia University, and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest books, Free Trade Today (Princeton, 2002) and In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004) present the economic case and the social case for globalization and for free trade, respectively in far greater depth than a Lecture permits. Some of the arguments in this Lecture will be developed further in a substantial Afterword to the new edition of In Defense of Glob

The Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development

DOI: 10.1355/ae23-2m The Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development. Edited by Jomo K.S. New Delhi: Tulika Books; London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. Pp. 234. The central preoccupation of modern economic thinking over past two centuries has been question of how best to foster national economic development. Emerging in conjunction with industrial capitalism, economic thinking has given rise - after many permutations - to a dominant orthodoxy popularly known as Washington Consensus, which promotes a Neoliberal economic order based on profit motive, markets, and free trade. The current book is part of a trilogy that aims to trace and reassess of economic ideas, presenting both a critique and an alternative discourse to dominant Neoliberal paradigm. In a crucial contribution to history of economic thought, contributors to this book revisit and reassess important contributions to debates surrounding economic through analysing work of many economists that are not normally considered pioneers of economics. The authors of volume suggest that way forward for is to reject imperialist and nineteenth century English liberal economic orthodoxy and instead build on heterodox economic legacies of various economists examined in book. Indeed, this book (and two others in trilogy) is part of ongoing reassessment of as a discipline to make it less autistic and respond more effectively to needs of developing world. In doing so, essays in this collection provide a critical response to formalistic reductionism in as well as a wealth of alternative views on economic ideas from the pioneering generation of post-war decades, reflecting diversity that still characterised economic thought at that time, before orthodoxy of today was established (pp. vii-viii). This current volume is comprised of sixteen chapters, and in its introduction, Jomo K.S., currently Assistant secretary General for Economic Development in United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), contends that a re-evaluation of history of provides an opportunity to challenge current 'limited and limiting' Neoliberal perspective, whose fundamental categories of analysis are necessarily linked to particular historical circumstances (p. viii). Prabhat Patnaik, in first chapter of book, argues that division between economics and development as disciplines should be rejected, as underdeveloped economies are not merely laggards struggling to catch up with economies. Rather, their state is a result of their interaction with metropolitan capitalism, and not due to their pristine pre-capitalist condition. Prabhat Patnaik argues that developed and underdeveloped countries together constitute totality of capitalism (p. 6) and this totality must be domain of analysis of economic theory, to be treated as a whole. The following chapters reassess contributions of many different economists in their richness and variety to ideas on economic development. While Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Alexander Gerschenkron, Raul Prebisch, Arthur Lewis, and Hans Singer are normally seen as key - albeit heterodox - thinkers in of ideas in economics, other contributors in book also assess works and ideas of economists such as William Petty, Friedrich List, Alexander Hamilton, Alfred Marshall, Michael Kalecki, Nicholas Kandor, and John Maynard Keynes. Given richness of debates that chapters in volume discuss, this review focuses on two chapters as examples: Utsa Patnaik's chapter on David Ricardo and Kari Polanyi Levitt's on his father, Karl Polanyi. Utsa Patnaik, in his contribution to volume, takes David Ricardo to task and argues that his theory of comparative advantage rests on an erroneous assumption. …

Guest Editorial: Sometimes Bigger Is Better: Big Oil as Radical Innovators in E&P

The 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter famously aspired to be the greatest economist in the world, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the greatest lover in Vienna. He would therefore be quite pleased to discover that the first and most public of these objectives was at least partially achieved: One of his more famous economic predictions is apparently true. In the latter part of his career, Schumpeter postulated that large firms have many advantages over smaller ones in the development of radical new technologies. Whereas small and medium-sized enterprises frequently have to pay an undue amount of attention to their short-term balance sheets, large companies with deep pockets do not have to be nearly as sensitive to immediate profit constraints. Schumpeter accordingly reasoned that larger firms have both the resources and the time to pursue new ideas, and they are better positioned to explore the implications for their business of technological discontinuities before deciding whether to bring these technologies into the folds of the company's core activities and operations. This is not to say that smaller firms will not have an important role to play in the development of new technologies within the E&P industry. Product and process life cycles are steadily growing shorter, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for any one company to support an aggressive R&D agenda single-handedly. Robert Z. Gussin, former Vice President for Science and Technology at Johnson & Johnson, once drove this point home by musing that technology in his industry "has become so sophisticated, broad, and expensive that even the largest companies cannot afford to do it all themselves." Responding to these same forces in the E&P industry, many large integrated majors have turned to their supply networks as a source of innovation. Hit and Miss To be sure, there is evidence from other industries that it is quite healthy for companies to rely to some degree on collaborative suppliers for new ideas. History has shown on many occasions that even the most focused R&D programs fail to guarantee results consistently. Many of the significant and commercially celebrated innovations that have emerged over the years have not been the result of tightly managed research agendas, but instead were brought about by a convoluted process of serendipity and unique circumstances. The hit-and-miss nature of R&D is such that managing science has been compared to herding cats: It is usually not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all. Realizing that it is almost impossible to forecast where their next "new big thing" will come from, many companies across a wide variety of sectors are starting to broaden the radius of ideas that they might tap into by turning to their supplier base.

The characteristics of a monetary economy: a Keynes-Schumpeter approach

Mainstream monetary theory considers money only as an instrument meant to facilitate trading without having any effect on income or on the evolution of the economic system. The aim of this paper is to elaborate a monetary theory capable of supporting the thesis of money non-neutrality based on the arguments developed by Keynes and Schumpeter. The synthesis of the theories of these two great economists will be formulated starting from the two points which are common in the views of Keynes and Schumpeter. First, in contrast with mainstream theory, Keynes and Schumpeter state that the diffusion of a fiat money induces a radical modification into the way in which the economic system works. Second, when Keynes and Schumpeter describe the reasons why money and financial aggregates are not neutral, they highlight the fundamental role of the credit market and of banks; in contrast with the mainstream theory, they do not consider the credit market as the mirror image of the goods market.

The Life and Work of Professor Sir Hans Singer: An Appreciation

ABSTRACT Hans Singer, who died on 26 February 2006 at the age of 95, was one of the most highly respected and internationally recognized development economists. He was one of that small band of pioneers who stimulated so many ideas that engaged the attention of the world community over much of the last century. As an economic activist, few people have been such indefatigable thinkers about the problems of developing countries and persistent instigators of ways of overcoming them. Instinctively practical rather than ideological he based his theoretical work on observations, not dogma. He was one of the main intellectual architects of post-war development strategies. Educated under the two great economists, Schumpeter and Keynes, he studied unemployment and poverty first hand in Britain in the 1930s, and helped establish the United Nations Department of Economic Affairs. He went on to devote his life not just to the academic study of development economics and the problems of developing countries but also to finding practical solutions. The scale, dimension, and diversity of his 450 publications, produced over seven decades, are truly remarkable. Among his numerous positions and contributions, he was a member of the CJDS Advisory Board for many years. This appreciation attempts to summarize his main achievements.

La régulation en pratique

Cet article résume, de façon non technique, les principales contributions de Jean-Jacques Laffont et Jean Tirole dans le domaine de la régulation, en insistant sur leurs implications pratiques. Nous montrons comment leur idée nouvelle d’utiliser les mesures comptables des coûts de production permet d’améliorer le mode de régulation des monopoles naturels. Nous montrons également comment leur analyse rigoureuse de la détermination des prix d’accès dans les industries de réseau a complètement renouvelé les termes du débat. Ceci nous permet d’illustrer plusieurs caractéristiques de la démarche scientifique de Jean-Jacques Laffont, notamment son souci de bien mettre en valeur les apports initiaux des grands économistes du passé, de bien s’imprégner des aspects techniques et institutionnels des industries considérées et enfin de ne pas hésiter à renouveler l’analyse économique en prenant en compte de nouveaux instruments.

Celebrating Irving Fisher: The Legacy of a Great Economist

Celebrating Irving Fisher: The Legacy of a Great Economist

Jean-Jacques Laffont: A Look Back

JeanJacques Laffont, economist extraordinaire and visionary founder of the Institut de l'Economie Industrielle (IDEI) in Toulouse, died at his home in Colomiers on May 1 after a valiant battle against cancer. He was fifty-seven years old. Laffont is remarkable for having had three distinct professional identities and for performing at the very highest level in all of them. First, he was one of the great economists of our time. He was instrumental in transforming public economics, regulatory economics, and the economics of organizations into fields of study that put primary emphasis on conflicts in incentives. In a dozen books and many scores of articles, he examined these conflicts, which arise when the objectives of a society, industry, or organization differ from those of the agents (e.g., people or firms) that belong to them. Second, as an institution builder, Laffont assembled a formidable array of economic talent at IDEI, now one of the finest educational and research groups in the world. Somehow Laffont overcame the gravitational attraction of Paris and brought this talent to Toulouse then a relative backwater. On a continent where universities are supported by the state, he put an alternative model on display: IDEFs funders come largely from the corporate world. They support the basic research vital to the intellectual life of the place in exchange for expert advice from IDEFs economists. Laffont not only invented this imaginative approach to funding research but personally attracted most of the partner firms that support IDEI today. Third, he proved to be a forceful and influential policy advisor on regulation, competition, and economic development. More than most other theorists, he was a natural in this role. Even his purest theoretical papers were invariably motivated by issues of genuine practical consequence, and his scientific work provided a remarkably coherent and detailed conception of the role of public intervention. JeanJacques Laffont was born in Toulouse on April 13, 1947. Educated in mathematics and economics at the University of Toulouse and ENSAE in Paris, he

Two Views on the Obstacles to Development

Jan Kregel Two Views on the Obstacles to Development I COUNT MYSELF AMONG THE MULTITUDE GIVEN AN INTRODUCTION TO the history of economic thought through Bob Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers. When I first read the book Iwas not sufficiently knowledge­ able of foreign languages to recognize the distinguishing characteristic for those included in the book was having a unique Weltanschauung. These were not worldlyphilosophers in the sense of having experience of the world, but rather in the sense of having an individual worldview of economic development. My recollection is that I had the book assigned as a basic text in the autumn of 1964. Most students of economics were then unaware of the implications of the UN Trusteeship Council’s rapid creation of new independent states from former colonies and the problems of economic development that they would face. But, the June 1963 pref­ ace to the revised edition o f The Worldly Philosophers (despite several transoceanic moves I still have my original copy) already notes that this shift reflected the change in economics toward “more concern over the trend of economic development” (1964: ii). Most ofthe specific discussion ofdevelopment issues is found in the concluding chapter, “Beyond the Economic Revolution,” which laments This contribution is made in the author’s personal capacity and should not be interpreted as representing official positions of the United Nations on the subject. I am grateful to M. Forstater, W. Milberg, and L. R. Wray for comments that have improved the text. social research Vol 71 : No 2 : Summer 2 004 279 that economists are not “in general today keenly aware of the historic responsibilities and implications” of making policy recommendations on appropriate priorities and strategies for developing countries: The trend in economic thought in our time is not towards the “grand dynamics” of the future, but turns aside from such speculative social forecasting to consideration of more “scientific” matters. Many economists build “models” ... of an economy in growth, or concern themselves with complex quasi-engineering problems of labor inputs and commod­ ity outputs. . . . But if the temper of most contemporary economists tends to be unadventuresome and academic there is no lack of prophecy and persuasion to which we can turn. Only they are not new voices. They go back—all of them—to the arguments and architecture of the great economists themselves” (290). Heilbroner’s position reflects Adolph Lowe’s (1976) that “the standard works of the classical economists—Smith, Ricardo, Marx—not only contain but essentially are theories of economic growth” (Lowe, 1976: 5; emphasis in original). Returning to the book some 40 years later provides a range of alternative approaches, in contrast to the modem convergence of opinion on development issues and the basis for some reflection on the “trend of economic development” policy. Today it is widely believed that economists know the right poli­ cies required for successful economic development; it is just a ques­ tion of sufficient political will for governments to implement them. These basic policies largely reflect the principles put forward in the “Washington Consensus” policies applied in Latin America over the last two decades and the market “shock” approach to Eastern European transition. They do not, however, reflect the experience of the Asian economies. This alone should be cause for concern—since the 1960s Asia has far outstripped the performance of both Latin America and Eastern Europe. 280 social research This modern approach accepts what has been considered a given of development economics since the adaptation of the HarrodDomar growth models of the 1940s and 1950s: the need to augment the resources available to support growth since developing countries lack the will or the ability to increase domestic savings or to attract foreign capital. Successful economies that have experienced growth have over­ come this obstacle so that the sole aim of development policy can be reduced to the introduction and implementation of appropriate poli­ cies to improve the domestic mobilization of resources and to provide a hospitable domestic environment to attract the resources of foreign investors. The emphasis is on the implementation of domestic policies that will provide a sufficient flow of resources domestically or from abroad to be invested and produce higher growth. These...

Good colleagues

We examine the “thanking” behavior of economists to see which economists are thanked the most in the asterisk footnote of papers published in three major economics journals over the period 1960–1999. Not surprisingly, the names of the great economists show up on these lists most frequently.

2. Nobel Laureate: Jan Tinbergen (1903‐1994)

Says of Jon Tinbergen that he was a very modest person and a very great scientist. Looks at his early humble beginnings in The Netherlands and on to his many and varied advisory placements with a number of foreign governments. Concludes Tinbergen was a great original twentieth century economist.