ALBERTO ALESINA TO GIVE GUNNAR MYRDAL LECTURE
To speak on "Welfare policies in the UNECE region: Why so different?"
Palais des Nations (Salle XVIII), Geneva
Friday, 12 May 2006, 3:00 p.m.
Geneva, 25 April 2006 - This year's Gunnar Myrdal Lecture will
be delivered by Alberto Alesina of Harvard University. The topic will be "Welfare
policies in the UNECE region: Why so different?" The lecture will take place
on Friday, 12 May 2006 at the Palais des Nations (Salle XVIII) at 3:00
p.m.
Alberto Alesina will discuss why the UNECE countries* have
chosen rather different models of welfare state and, more generally, alternative
policies to fight poverty. In particular, the lecture will focus upon why the
American welfare system is less generous than the typical European one, emphasizing
the causes and implications of these differences. It will also explore variations
in welfare policies within western European countries by comparing their effectiveness,
successes and failures. Prof. Alesina will discuss this analysis, and comparison
could serve as a guidance for Central and Eastern European countries in selecting
a strategy for the reform of their welfare system.
Professor Alberto Alesina, born in Italy in 1957, is the Nathaniel Ropes
Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. Currently he is Chairman
of the Department of Economics. He obtained his PhD from Harvard in 1986.
He is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre
for Economic Policy Research.
Professor Alesina is a leader in the field of Political Economy and has
published extensively in all major academic journals in economics. He has
published several books and edited many more. His two most recent books are
The Size of Nations, published by MIT Press, and Fighting Poverty in the US
and Europe: A World of Difference, published by Oxford University Press. The
MIT Press will publish his book, The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline later
this year. He has been a Co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics for
eight years and Associate Editor of many academic journals. He has published
columns in many leading newspapers around the world. In 1990 The Economist
magazine named him one of the eight best economists under the age of forty
in the world and most likely to win a Nobel Prize in the future.
Professor Alesina's work has covered a variety of topics: political
business cycles, the political economy of fiscal policy and budget
deficits, the process of European integration, stabilization
policies in high inflation countries, the determination of the
size of countries, currency unions, the political economic determinants
of redistributive policies, differences in the welfare state
in the US and Europe and, more generally, differences in the
economic system in the US and Europe, the effect of alternative
electoral systems on economic policies, and the determination
of the choice of different electoral systems. His scholarly work
has been widely cited and influential.
*******
The Lectures are named in honour of Gunnar Myrdal, first Executive Secretary
of the UNECE (1947-1957), who received the Nobel Prize in economics
in 1974. The topic that Mr. Alesina has chosen for his lecture, "Welfare
policies in the UNECE region: Why so different?",
would surely have been of interest to Gunnar Myrdal since much of
his academic work was concerned with poverty and anti-poverty
programmes.
This is the fourth in a new series devoted to major
international economic problems. The UNECE 2003 Myrdal Lecture
was given by Nobel prize winner Professor Douglass C. North,
the 2004 Lecture was given by Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel
Laureate in Economics and the 2005 Lecture was given by Pascal
Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization and
former Trade Commissioner of the European Commission.
For further information
please contact:
UNECE Information Service
Palais des Nations
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41(0)22 917 44 44
Fax: +41(0)22 917 05 05
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.unece.org/press/Myrdal_lectures/Myrdal_2006.htm
__________
* Albania, Andorra,
Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland,
Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland,
Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania,
Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia
and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, The
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United
Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan.
Ref: ECE/GEN/06/P07