Jagdish Bhagwati

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Jagdish Bhagwati
Neoclassical economics
Birth July 26, 1934 (1934-07-26) (age 74)
Nationality India
Field Macroeconomics, globalization
Opposed Paul Krugman, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an American economist originally of Indian nationality. He has been a University Professor at Columbia University for many years and is known for his advocacy of free trade.

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[edit] Early years and personal life

Bhagwati was born into a Gujarati Family in Mumbai in 1934 and graduated from Sydenham College, Mumbai. He then went with "senior status" to read over two years for the BA in Economics at Cambridge where he was a member of St. John's College, Cambridge and received the degree in 1956. He received the Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. The subject of his doctoral thesis is not presently available in public.

Bhagwati is married to Padma Desai, also a Columbia economist and Russia-specialist; they have one daughter. Bhagwati and Desai's joint 1970 OECD study India: Planning for Industrialization was a notable contribution at the time. His elder brother, Justice P.N. Bhagwati, is a former Chief Justice of India.

[edit] Career

Bhagwati has previously served as an external advisor to the Director General of the World Trade Organization in 2001, as a special policy advisor on globalization to the United Nations in 2000, and as an economics policy advisor to the Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade from 1991 to 1993. From 1968 until 1980, Bhagwati was an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [1] Bhagwati currently serves on the Academic Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Asia) and on the board of scholars of the Centre for Civil Society. He is a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2000, Bhagwati was signatory to an amicus briefing, coordinated by the American Enterprise Institute, with Supreme Court to contend that the Environmental Protection Agency should, contrary to a prior ruling, be allowed to take into account the costs of regulations when setting environmental standards.

In January, 2004, Bhagwati published In Defense of Globalization, a book in which he argues "this process [of globalization] has a human face, but we need to make that face more agreeable."

In May, 2004, Bhagwati was one of the experts who took part in the Copenhagen Consensus project.

In 2006, Bhagwati was a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons who reviewed the work of UNCTAD.

[edit] Awards and commentary

Paul Samuelson, on the occasion of Bhagwati's 70th Birthday festschrift conference in Gainesville Florida, January 2005 said:

  • "I measure a scholar’s prolific-ness not by the mere number of his publishings. Just as the area of a rectangle equals its width times its depth, the quality of a lifetime accomplishment must weight each article by its novelties and wisdoms...Jagdish Bhagwati is more like Haydn: a composer of more than a hundred symphonies and no one of them other than top notch...In the struggle to improve the lot of mankind, whether located in advanced economies or in societies climbing the ladder out of poverty, Jagdish Bhagwati has been a tireless partisan of that globalization which elevates global total-factor----productivities both of richest America and poorest regions of Asia and Africa."[1]

[edit] Bibliography

Incomplete - to be updated

[edit] Books

  • Jagdish Bhagwati (2008). Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195331653. 
  • Jagdish Bhagwati (2004). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517025-3. 
  • Jagdish Bhagwati (2002). The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalization. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-52327-2. 
  • James H. Mathis, Jagdish Bhagwati (Foreword) (2002). Regional Trade Agreements in the GATT/WTO: Article XXIV and the Internal Trade Requirement. Norwell/TMC Asser Press. ISBN 90-6704-139-4. 
  • Jagdish N. Bhagwati (Editor), Robert E. Hudec (Editor) (1996). Fair Trade and Harmonization, Vol. 1: Economic Analysis. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-02401-2. 

[edit] Articles

Bhagwati, Jagdish (November 1993). "The Case for Free Trade". Scientific American 269 (5): 18-23. 

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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