RUSSIAN AWARD FOR JÁNOS KORNAI
János Kornai has been awarded the Leontief Medal. The distinguished academic recognition is named after Nobel laureate Russian-born American economist Wassily Leontief, the creator of the input-output analysis. The Leontief Medal is awarded to several Russian and one international economist annually by the Leontief Centre in St. Petersburg, on the recommendation of an international committee. Recent awardees include late Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar, American Nobel laureates Robert Solow and Lawrence Klein, and Leszek Balcerowicz, the first Polish finance minister after the change of system. Professor Kornai received the Leontief Medal in St. Petersburg at the February 13, 2010 ceremony.
The ceremony took place in the Michaliovsky Palace, the former palace of the Tzar, and was opened by Leontief Centre director Irina Karelina. Three laudation speeches were given: by Moscow Center of Strategic Research chairman Mikhail Dmitriev (read his speech in the original Russian here), Masaaki Kubinowa, professor of the Hitotsubashy University (Japan) (read his speech here), and Boris Firsov, professor of the St. Petersburg European University.
Following the speeches, the Leontief Medals were handed over by Professor Sergey Vasiliev, head of the Council of the Leontief Centre, and Professor Irina Elizievna, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and member of the international committee. First János Kornai was given the Medal (find photos here, the Leontief Medal here), followed by Natalia Zubarevich, professor of the Moscow State University. The other two Russian laureates, German Gref (head of the Russian Sberbank) and Yaroslav Kuzminov (College of Economics, Moscow) could not be present at the ceremony.
The delivery of the medals was followed by the laureates’ lectures. The title of János Kornai’s lecture was “Leontief, mathematical planning: Dreams and reality” (read in English here).
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