Jagdish Bhagwati

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Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an Indian-American economist and a University Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is well known for his research in International Trade and for his advocacy of free trade. He is also a resident fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York

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 (as did colleague and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen who was at Trinity College) where he was a member of St. John's College, Cambridge and received the degree in 1956. Bhagwati's experience at St John's College joined that of other eminent Indian economists including Sir Partha Dasguptha and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He received the Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967.

Bhagwati is married to Padma Desai, also a Columbia economist and Russia-specialist; they have one daughter. He is 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.

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.

Awards and commentary

• In 2006, he was awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star.
• He was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce in 2004.
• In 2000 he was awarded Padma Vibhushan award.
• He received the Seidman Distinguished Award in International Political Economy in 1998.
• In 1974, he was awarded the Indian Econometric Society's Mahalanobis Memorial Medal.
• 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.[2][3]

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]

Bibliography

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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. 

Articles

• 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. [4]

See also

• Gujarati people
• List of people from Gujarat
• Globalization

References

• Webpage of Jagdish Bhagwati from Columbia University

External links

• Homepage of Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University website, accessed March 2004.
• Council on Foreign Relations, Jagdish N. Bhagwati Andre Meyer Senior Fellow in International Economics, undated, accessed April 2004.
• September 24, 1998 debate with Ralph Nader
• Globalisation Institute
• Audio interview with National Review Online