Jagdish Bhagwati

Jagdish Bhagwati
Born	July 26, 1934 Bombay, British India
Nationality	United States
Institution	Columbia University, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi School of Economics, MIT
Field	International economics, globalization, free trade
School or tradition	Neoclassical economics
Alma mater	Bombay University (B.A.) Cambridge University (B.A.) MIT (Ph.D.)
Influences	Robert Solow

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an India-born, naturalized American economist. He is a professor of economics and law at Columbia University.^[1] Bhagwati is notable for his research in international trade and for his advocacy of free trade.

Early years and personal life

Bhagwati was born in 1934, into a Gujarati family in the Bombay Presidency during the British Raj, and received a BA from Sydenham College, Mumbai. He then traveled to England to study at St. John's College, Cambridge, receiving a second BA at Cambridge (in Economics) in 1956. He received the Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 for a thesis titled "Essays in International Economics", supervised by Charles P. Kindleberger.

Bhagwati is married to Padma Desai, also a Columbia economist and Russia-specialist; they have one daughter. He is the brother of P.N. Bhagwati, former Chief Justice of India and also of S.N. Bhagwati, an eminent neurosurgeon. Bhagwati and Desai's joint 1970 OECD study India: Planning for Industrialization was a notable contribution at the time.^[2]

Career

After completing his PhD, Bhagwati returned to India in 1961, first to teach briefly at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and then as professor of international trade at the Delhi School of Economics at the University of Delhi, from 1962 to 1968. From 1968 until 1980, Bhagwati was an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[3] 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. 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.

In 2000, Bhagwati was signatory to an amicus briefing, coordinated by the American Enterprise Institute, with the Supreme Court of the United States 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 the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In early 2010, Bhagwati joined the advisory board of the Institute for Migrant Rights, Cianjur – Indonesia.^[4]

At present, he is professor of economics and law at Columbia University.

Awards, honors and commentary

• Mahalanobis Memorial Medal of the Indian Econometric Society (1974)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982)^[5]
• Seidman Distinguished Award in International Political Economy (1998)
• Padma Vibhushan Award (2000)
• Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian Chamber of Commerce (2004)
• Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star (2006)

Other awards include the Bernhard Harms Prize (Germany), the Kenan Enterprise Award (United States), the Freedom Prize (Switzerland), and the John R. Commons Award (United States). He has also received honorary degrees from the University of Sussex and Erasmus University, as well as others.^[6][7]

Paul Samuelson, on the occasion of Bhagwati's 70th birthday festschrift conference in Gainesville, Florida on January of 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."^[8]

Jagdish Bhagwati was the fictional winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in The Simpsons episode Elementary School Musical (The Simpsons).

Bibliography

Books

• Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya (2013). Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-61-039271-X.
• Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya (2013). India's Tryst with Destiny: Debunking the Myths that Undermine Progress and Addressing New Challenges. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-9350295854.
• Jagdish Bhagwati (2008). Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-533165-6.
• Jagdish Bhagwati (2007). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195330939.
• 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.
• Jagdish N. Bhagwati (Editor) (1972). Economics and World Order from the 1970's to the 1990's. MacMillan. ISBN 978-0029034705.

Articles

• Bhagwati, Jagdish (March 1964). "The Pure Theory of International Trade: A Survey". The Economic Journal 74 (293): 1–84. doi:10.2307/2228112.
• Bhagwati, Jagdish (November 1993). "The Case for Free Trade". Scientific American 269 (5): 18–23.
• Bhagwati, Jagdish (Fall 2009). "Feeble Critiques: Capitalism's Petty Detractors". World Affairs.
• Bhagwati, Jagdish (2008). "Protectionism". In David R. Henderson (ed.). Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (2nd ed.). Indianapolis: Library of Economics and Liberty. ISBN 978-0865976658. OCLC 237794267.

See also

• Globalization
• "Spaghetti Bowl" Effect

References

1. "Professor Jagdish Bhagwati Called Upon by World Leaders to Find Ways to Boost Global Trade". Law.columbia.edu. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
2. Archived November 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
3. Archived August 3, 2004, at the Wayback Machine.
4. "The Institute for Migrant Rights". The Institute for Migrant Rights. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
5. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 25, 2011.
6. Archived March 6, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
7. Archived September 27, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
8. Paul A. Samuelson. "Jagdish Bhagwati, the wunderkind who became the tireless theorist of international trade" (PDF). Columbia.edu. Retrieved 6 November 2014.

External links

• Homepage of Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University website, accessed March 2004.
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about Jagdish Bhagwati in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Jagdish Bhagwati collected news and commentary at The New York Times