GDAE announces Leontief Prize winners

Tufts' Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) yesterday announced the two winners of its annual Leontief Prize. Bina Agarwal, professor of economics at Delhi University in India, and Daniel Kahneman, a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, will receive the award at a ceremony in Spring 2010.

The Leontief Prize recognizes individuals who advance the social and environmental frontiers of economics.

Agarwal, who currently serves on the U.N. Committee for Development Policy, has been "expanding issues of economic thought for a long time," Tim Wise, deputy director of the GDAE, told the Daily. She is considered a leader in the fields of land reform, property rights and gender, particularly focusing on South Asia.

Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his work in "essentially helping create the field of behavioral economics," Wise said. A psychology professor at Princeton, he has worked to link human motivations and rationale to economics.

Their work supports the aims of the GDAE, which seeks to promote the economic and social goals of a community in an environmentally sustainable manner.

--Alexandra Bogus