János Kornai has been awarded the highest Hungarian state decoration
March the 15th, the Hungarian national holiday, is the traditional occasion when the Hungarian president awards state decorations in the building of the Hungarian parliament. This year the highest state decoration, the Grand Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, was awarded to János Kornai. The official announcement emphasizes “his life achievement and internationally acknowledged results in researching the theory and performance of economic systems.”
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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 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 (read a report here), where the influence of his work on the views of Russian economists was emphasized in the laudation speeches. “Kornai’s 1980 book Economics of Shortage opened the eyes of Russian economists”, one of the speakers pointed out. After receiving the medal János Kornai gave a talk on “Leontief, mathematical planning: Dreams and reality”. (Read his speech in English.)
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Professor Jinglian Wu is considered the most significant and most influential economist in mainland China. He was celebrated on his 80th birthday by his friends, students and colleagues at a two-day celebration conference in Beijing on January 26-27, 2010.
János Kornai was invited to participate at the celebration and to give a talk at the conference. Due to health reasons he could not go, but sent his celebrating greetings in a video message (downlodable video: 25 MB, 100 MB). His lecture was presented by his former Harvard student Professor Chenggang Xu (Hong Kong University), and was commented by Professor Masahiko Aoki (Stanford University, President of the International Economic Association) and Professor Yingyi Qian, dean of the Faculty of Economics of most prestigeous Chinese university (Tsinghua University).
Read the report on the conference, sent by the organizers to János Kornai.
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On September 18-19 2009 WIDER, the UN research institute in Helsinki held an international conference on „Reflections on Transition: Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” opened by Vaclav Havel’s video welcome address, which was followed by János Kornai’s keynote lecture „Innovation and Dynamism: Interaction between Systems and Technical Progress." (The revised version is downloadable here.)
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Kornai’s memoirs By Force of Thought appeared in the seventh language, in Chinese, published by the Chinese University Press (Hong Kong) in July 2009. Find more details here.
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Kornai’s memoirs appeared in Vietnamese in 2008. The printed edition has sold out. The full text of the book is available here.
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The June 2009 issue of the Japanese Journal of Comparative Economics is a special issue discussing the work of Wlodzimierz Brus (Poland - UK) and János Kornai, including the following papers:
-- Tsuneo Morita (Tateyama Laboratory Hungary): „Understanding Kornai Economics”,
-- Tsuneaki Sato (Yokohama City University): „Brus: Revisionism in the Criticism of the Economic System of ’Really-Existed’ Socialism”,
-- Katsuji Nakagane (Aoyama Gaukin University): „Brus and Kornai Viewed from Today’s Vantage Point: Some Critical Comments on Socialist Economic Theory by Two Great Thinkers”.
The issue also published János Kornai’s article “The Soft Budget Constraint in the Hospital Sector”, based on his talk held in Japan last year. In English read here.
