2007 Leontief Prize

2007 Leontief Prize
Awarded to Stephen DeCanio and Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Professor Stephen DeCanio was honored for his path-breaking work on climate change analysis and policy. Dr. DeCanio enhances the traditional economic understandings of efficiency and motivation with a sense of social purpose.  He has written extensively on corporate organization and behavior as it pertains to the use of energy-efficient technologies, and has also criticized some standard approaches to the economics of climate change, such as the misuse of general equilibrium and cost-benefit analyses.  This may be seen in his latest book, Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique. From 1986 to ’87 DeCanio was the Senior Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.  He was one of the founders of the Computational Laboratories Group at UC Santa Barbara, and from 2001 to 2004 was a member of the board of directors of the organization, Redefining Progress.  He was a member of the United Nations Environment Programme Economic Options Panel, which reviewed the economic aspects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and served as Co-Chair of the Montreal Protocol’s Agricultural Economics Task Force of the Technical and Economics Assessment Panel. More on Dr. DeCanio’s work can be read at: https://stephendecanio.com/

Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram (Jomo K.S) was honored for his pioneering work on development and inequality.  Jomo K.S. has been Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development in the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) since January 2005. He was visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, founding chair of International Development Economics Associates, and professor in the applied economics department, University of Malaya, until 2004. He has taught at Science University of Malaysia, Harvard University, Yale University, National University of Malaysia, University of Malaya, and Cornell University. He has authored more than 35 monographs, edited more than 50 books, and translated 11 volumes, in addition to writing many academic papers and articles for the media. His most recent book, The New Development Economics: After the Washington Consensus, is available through Zed Books (2006).