János Kornai

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János Kornai (born January 21, 1928 in Budapest as János Kornhauser ) is a Hungarian economist .

life and work

Kornai is the son of a Jewish lawyer who was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 . He studied history and philosophy at the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest. From 1955 to 1958 he went to the newly established Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences , where he received his doctorate in 1956 . In 1961 he received his doctorate in economics from the Karl Marx University and in 1965 he received his doctorate from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Sc. (corresponds roughly to the German habilitation ). From 1958 to 1960 he worked as an economist at the planning office for light industry in Budapest. From 1960 to 1963 he was head of the Institute for Textile Industry in Budapest and from 1963 to 1967 head of the computer center at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Guest professorships took him to the London School of Economics in 1964, University of Sussex in 1966 , Stanford University in 1968 , Yale University in 1968 , Princeton University in 1972 , Stanford University in 1973, Stockholm University in 1976–77 , University of Geneva in 1981 , Munich University in 1983 , Institute in 1983–84 for Advanced Study, Princeton and Harvard University 1984-85 . From 1967 to 1993 he was research professor at the Institute of Economics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, from 1992 to 2002 at the Collegium Budapest . From 1986 he was also at Harvard: first as a professor and since 1991 as Allie S. Freed Professor of Economics. In 2002 he retired . Since 2005 he has been a research professor at the Central European University .

His doctoral thesis, Overcentralization, was the first critical book on the planned economy written by a resident of a communist country. In it Kornai called for a decentralization of the economy and a greater use of market forces. He was one of the first to introduce mathematical optimization into the Hungarian planned economy ( Mathematical Planning of Structural Decisions ). In his influential book The Economics of Shortage , he showed that the chronic shortage of goods is an inevitable consequence of the traditional communist system. After the fall of communism, he dealt with the transition to the western economic system: In The Road to a Free Economy , he suggested rapid stabilization with gradual privatization and a reform of the welfare state .

Kornai is married to the economist Zsuzsa Dániel and has three children.

Works

Kornai has published nearly 200 scientific papers and the following books:

  • Overcentralization in Economic Administration . Oxford University Press, Oxford [u. a.] 1959.
  • Mathematical Planning of Structural Decisions . North-Holland, Amsterdam 1967, German as: Mathematical methods in planning the economic structure . Publishing house Die Wirtschaft, Berlin 1967.
  • Anti-equilibrium. On economic systems theory and the tasks of research . North-Holland, Amsterdam 1971, German as: Anti-Equilibrium. About the theory of economic systems and the associated research tasks . Springer, Berlin [a. a.] 1975, ISBN 0-7204-3055-0 , ISBN 0-444-10122-5 .
  • Rush versus Harmonic Growth . North-Holland, Amsterdam 1972, ISBN 0-7204-3407-6 .
  • Economics of Shortage . 2 volumes, North-Holland, Amsterdam 1980, ISBN 0-444-86059-2 , ISBN 0-444-85426-6 (volume 1), ISBN 0-444-86058-4 (volume 2).
  • Growth, Shortage and Efficiency . Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982, ISBN 0-631-12787-9 ; University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982, ISBN 0-520-04901-2 .
  • Contradictions and Dilemmas . Corvina, Budapest 1985, ISBN 963-13-2063-4 ; MIT Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-262-11107-1 .
  • Vision and Reality, Market and State: New Studies on the Socialist Economy and Society . Corvina, Budapest 1990, ISBN 963-13-3013-3 ; Harvester-Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead and New York 1990, ISBN 0-7450-0745-7 ; Routledge, New York 1990, ISBN 0-415-90285-1 .
  • The Road to a Free Economy. Shifting from a Socialist System. The Example of Hungary . WW Norton, New York, ISBN 0-393-02887-9 , ISBN 0-393-30691-7 ; HVG Kiadó, Budapest 1990.
  • The Socialist System. The Political Economy of Communism . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1992, ISBN 0-691-04298-5 , ISBN 0-691-00393-9 ; Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-828751-8 , ISBN 0-19-828776-3 ( online ), German as: The socialist system. The political economy of communism . Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1995, ISBN 3-7890-4086-X .
  • Highway and Byways. Studies on Socialist Reform and Postsocialist Transition . MIT Press, Cambridge 1995, ISBN 0-262-11198-5 , German as: Unterwegs. Essays on the economic transformation in Hungary . Metropolis Verlag, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-89518-092-0 .
  • Struggle and Hope. Essays on Stabilization and Reform in a Post-Socialist Economy . Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham [u. a.] 1997, ISBN 1-85898-606-0 .
  • Paying the Bill for Goulash Communism . Atlantic Research and Publications and Columbia University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-88033-455-X .
  • with Karen Eggleston: Welfare, Choice and Solidarity in Transition. Reforming the Health Sector in Eastern Europe . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-79036-0 .
  • By Force of Thought. Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey . The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts [et al. a.] 2006, ISBN 0-262-11302-3 , ISBN 978-0-262-11302-1 .

Prices

Memberships

literature

  • Mark Blaug (Ed.): Who's who in economics . 3rd edition, Elgar, Cheltenham [u. a.] 1999, pp. 629-631, ISBN 1-85898-886-1
  • Mark Blaug: Great Economists since Keynes . Edward Elgar, Cheltenham [u. a.] 1998, pp. 143-145, ISBN 1-85898-692-3
  • Michel Beaud and Gilles Dostaler: Economic thought since Keynes. A History and Dictionary of Major Economists . Edward Elgar, Brookfield 1994, pp. 303-305, ISBN 1-85278-667-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Philip Plickert: The traitor of socialism. faz.net, December 28, 2013, accessed December 28, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Kornai, János
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian economist
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest , Hungary