Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26,1934) is an Indian-born naturalized American economist and one of the most influential trade theorists of his generation.[1][2][3] He is a University Professor of economics and law at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has made significant contributions to international trade theory and economic development.
He is widely regarded as the intellectual father of the Indian economic reforms of 1991. He is one of the few professors in American academia to have a chair named after him while he was still teaching at the university. He is one of only 10 scholars who hold the title of University Professor at Columbia University.[6] Bhagwati is the recipient of several prestigious awards,including the Order of the Rising Sun,Padma Vibhushan,Frank Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy and the Freedom Prize of Switzerland.[7]
In 2014,the Financial Times called him "one of the most outstanding economists of his generation never to have won the Nobel Prize". This view is shared by his peers including Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman,"The crucial point for me is that people didn't understand at all clearly how distortions in a trading economy relate to policy before Jagdish spelled it out. Once he did,it became so clear that it was hard to believe that someone had to point it out. In my view,that makes his work Nobel-worthy."[8]
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.[9]
From 1980 he taught economics at Columbia University,where he was Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science and later University Professor,Economics and Law. He is one of only 10 scholars who hold the title of University Professor at Columbia University.
He has held several important positions internationally,including special adviser to the United Nations on globalization,economic policy adviser to Arthur Dunkel-the director-general of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and external adviser to the World Trade Organization. He has also worked as a member of group appointed by the director-general of the WTO on the future of the WTO.
He was also a member of the advisory committee to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the New Partnership for Africa's Development,an economic program accelerating economic co-operation and integration among African countries.
In May,2004,Bhagwati was one of the experts who took part in the Copenhagen Consensus project.
In January 2004,Bhagwati published In Defense of Globalization, a book in which he argues that globalization,when properly governed,is the most powerful force for social good in the world today. He described how globalization helps the cause of women,reduces child labor and increases literacy. He makes a point that:
... this process [of globalization] has a human face,but we need to make that face more agreeable.
Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson,on the occasion of Bhagwati's 70th birthday festschrift conference in Gainesville,Florida in 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.[15]
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Books
Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya (2013). Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries. PublicAffairs. ISBN978-1610392716.
Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya (2013). India's Tryst with Destiny: Debunking the Myths that Undermine Progress and Addressing New Challenges. HarperCollins. ISBN978-9350295854.
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. ISBN9067041394.
Jagdish N. Bhagwati; Robert E. Hudec, eds. (1996). Fair Trade and Harmonization, Vol. 1: Economic Analysis. MIT Press. ISBN0262024012.
1 2 Levy, Philip I.; Barfield, Claude (2011), Swap: How Trade Works, American Enterprise Institute Press, p.111, ISBN978-0844772073, For a thorough assessment of the challenges presented by trade and the environment by an author brought up in India but now a U.S. citizen, see Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
1 2 Drezner, Daniel W. (August 18, 2004). "Review of 'In Defense of Globalization' by Jagdish Bhagwati, New York: Oxford University Press". New York Times. If anyone can rise to this challenge, it should be Jagdish Bhagwati. An esteemed international economist, Bhagwati is a university professor at Columbia and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has advised the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. Born in India, educated in Britain and now an American citizen, he can claim to understand all points of view.
↑ Bhagwati, Jagdish N. (11 May 1967). Essays in international economics (Thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/61807.
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