Jagdish Bhagwati, renowned professor, member of UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan's High-level Advisory
Group and the External Advisor to the
Director General World Trade Organisation (WTO), is regarded as one of the foremost international trade economists of his
generation.
He was born in Mumbai, India in the year1934. He did
his B.com from Mumbai in 1954 and post graduated in l956 from Cambridge University
with a first in Economics Tripos. He then did his Ph.D at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology) in 1967. After studying in England and the United States, Bhagwati
returned to India in 1961 and served 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 to join Columbia, as the Ford International
Professor of Economics. Bhagwati is one
of the only 10 scholars who hold the title of University Professor at Columbia.
Professor Bhagwati has made major contributions to pure theory and
is engaged with major
practical policy problems as Economic Adviser to the Director-General of
GATT(1991-1993) and Special Adviser to the United Nations on Globalisation. He 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 also writes regularly for The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. He has written or edited 40 books, written hundreds of
articles, and founded and edited two journals, 'Economics and Politics' (1989)
and 'The
Journal of International Economics' (1971), the premier journal in the field
today. Among his famous books are 'In Defense of Globalization' (2004);'Free Trade
Today' (2002);'The Wind of the Hundred Days'
(2000);'A Stream of Windows' (1998);'India in
Transition' (1993);'World Trading System at
Risk' (1991);'Protectionism' (1988); 'Economics
& Politics' (founder-editor); 'The Journal of
International Economics' (founder-editor) etc.
He has been honored with Honorary D.Litt degrees from several universities
they are, Erasmus (Netherlands) and Sussex (UK), South Gujarat University.
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). Professor
Bhagwati has delivered many prestigious lectures, among them are 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.
Bhagwati is currently
Director of the Program on International Migration: Economics, Ethics and Law at
the Columbia University Law School. He presents himself as the human face of global laissez-faire
economics.
On the personal front Bhagwati,
is now living in America, with his wife
Padma Desai, who is 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
Bhagwati, a U.S. Marine officer.
At 70, he is widely tipped
as a future Nobel laureate, so respected among his fellow economists for his
insights into the workings of foreign trade.
Contact Address:
Economics Department, Columbia University
828 International Affairs Building, MC 3308,
420 West 118th Street,
New York, NY 10027
Contact now: E-mail
Phone:001 (212) 854-6297
Fax: 001 (212) 854-8059
