Béla Balassa

Béla Balassa
Born(1928-04-06)6 April 1928
Budapest, Hungary
Died10 May 1991(1991-05-10) (aged 63)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
EducationYale University
University of Budapest
Known forBalassa–Samuelson effect
Scientific career
FieldsEconomics
WorkplacesJohns Hopkins University
Thesis Planning in Theory and Practice: The Hungarian Experience  (1959)
Academic advisors
William Fellner
Lloyd Reynolds
Robert Triffin

Béla Alexander Balassa (6 April 1928 – 10 May 1991) was a Hungarian economist who served as a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and was a consultant to the World Bank.

Balassa is best known for his work on the relationship between purchasing power parity and cross-country productivity differences (the Balassa–Samuelson effect). He is also known for his work on revealed comparative advantage.

Balassa received a law degree from the University of Budapest. He left Hungary after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and went to Austria. While there, he received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study at Yale University, where he received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics in 1958 and 1959, respectively. He won the John Addison Porter Prize for 1959. Balassa also did extensive consulting work for the World Bank, serving as an advisor on development and trade policy. According to an authoritative history of the Bank, Balassa was "a protagonist of the Bank's conceptual transformation in the trade-policy area during the 1970s."

Beyond economics, Balassa was a noted gourmet who compiled and periodically updated an unofficial guide to eating well in Paris while remaining within an international agency expense allowance, which circulated among his friends and colleagues.

Publications

Biography

References

  1. ↑ Kenneth A. Reinert; Ramkishen S. Rajan; Amy Jocelyn Glass (22 December 2008). The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy. Princeton University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-691-12812-2. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
  2. ↑ Rüdiger Pethig; Michael Rauscher; Horst Siebert (7 May 2003). Challenges to the World Economy: Festschrift for Horst Siebert. Springer. p. 115. ISBN 978-3-540-00316-8. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
  3. ↑ Narvaez, Alfonso A. (1991-05-11). "Bela A. Balassa, 63, Economics Professor Who Fled Hungary". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-08.
  4. 1 2 Jan-Erik Lane (2008). Globalization: The Juggernaut of the 21st Century. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 137–. ISBN 978-0-7546-7393-4. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
  5. ↑ "Bela Balassa, Professor At Johns Hopkins, Dies", The Washington Post, May 11, 1991.
  6. ↑ Szenberg, Michael; Ramrattan, Lall, eds. (2004), Reflections of Eminent Economists, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 26–37, ISBN 1-84376-628-0.
  7. ↑ Devesh Kapur; John Prior Lewis; Richard Charles Webb (1997). The World Bank: History. Brookings Institution Press. p. 483. ISBN 978-0-8157-5234-9. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
  8. ↑ Balassa, Béla. A Primer in Culinary Economics, or How to Maximize the Culinary Utility of the Dollar in Paris. Processed. 8th edition, 1987.