2 economists to receive Leontief Prize

Tufts' Global Development and Environment Institute (G-DAE) will award 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.

They will receive their awards at a ceremony at Tufts on November 21, when they will speak on the topic of "Ruling Out National Development? States, Markets and Globalization." The awards ceremony and lectures will be introduced by Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow and G-DAE's co-directors, William Moomaw and Neva Goodwin. They will take place at 5 p.m. in Barnum Hall, Feinleib Lecture Hall 008, on the Medford/Somerville campus.

G-DAE, which is affiliated with Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, inaugurated the award in 2000 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning economist and G-DAE advisory board member Wassily Leontief, who died in 1999. The Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought is intended to recognize economists whose work, like that of G-DAE and Leontief, is broadening the field of economics to better comprehend urgent contemporary issues.

"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 Goodwin. "Their rigorous empirical work and profound understanding of economic development are appropriately recognized in an award that bears Leontief's name."

Amsden, the Barton T. Weller Professor of Political Economy at MIT, is perhaps best known for her recent work on the role of the state in newly industrializing countries. 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.

Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, has written extensively on the globalization process. 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?