News & Events

News # 6: A tribute to Professor Anirudh Lal Nagar:

I am profoundly saddened to learn about the passing away of Professor A.L.Nagar on 4 February 2014, in Pune, India.

Professor Nagar was one of the giants in modern econometrics. He taught statistics and econometrics for over 50 years at various universities around the world, such as DSE, JNU, Wharton-UPenn, Purdue, McGill, ANU, and Western Ontario.

Professor Nagar, along with Professor Henri Theil, provided essentials to theoretical development in simultaneous equations model building in late 1950s; and played a seminal role in many issues in statistical modelling and measurements.

He was engaged in doing empirical research in collaboration with Professor Lawrence Klein on understanding policy changes in stochastic simulation and forecasting exercise framework of the Brookings quarterly macro econometric models in mid-1960s. Since 1990s, he began a new wave of research activities in the measurement of human development and quality of life, including his advisory role in the UN. And, during those exciting years, I was truly fortunate to be a part of his research team, and spent unforgettable moments together in areas of statistical measurement and

forecasting model building.

A couple of months ago during my phone conversation, Professor Nagar discussed his ideas to combine economic, social and environmental issues in the structural model framework for better understanding of their linkages and relationships to provide policy perspectives on current global

development agenda.

Professor Nagar was a mentor and PhD dissertation supervisors to legions of students around the world, extremely privileged to be one of them, and always found time to passionately discuss research matters.

I am grateful to Nagar Saab for his unfailingly kind and generous intellectual and personal support since my student days in Delhi-JNU. For all of us, he was not only a great teacher and a visionary researcher but above all a humble and caring human being.

Professor Nagar, we will forever remain indebted to you for countless things!

Thank you, Sir!

Pictures (clockwise): NIPFP office Delhi; Graduate Institute Geneva; Delhi home; and UN Global Project LINK meeting presentation with Prof. Lawrence Klein in Geneva.

Professor Lawrence R Klein passed away on October 20 at the age of 93 at his home in Philadelphia.

For most of his career, Professor Klein was the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. During his illustrious academic career he received almost every honor an academic could dream of, culminating in the 1980 Nobel Prize in Economics.

For all of us (students and colleagues), he was a true friend and generous mentor. We all are in awe of his lifetime achievements. He was unfailingly supportive, kind, and engaged during all kinds of interactions. Many of us, including myself, owe our careers to his guidance.

There is no iota of doubt that the United Nations, and his students and colleagues around the world owe him so much for his life-long contributions to the field of economics and for our career advancement! From the early years of his academic career, he had been involved with the research programme of the United Nations system and its activities.

In 1968, Professor Klein initiated a Project LINK to coordinate macro economic forecasting models globally, and is now being run under the auspices of the United Nations and the University of Toronto. The LINK model is the foundation and basis of the United Nations' global economic forecasting for the annual flagship report the “World Economic Situation and Prospects”, a joint production of UNDESA, UNCTAD and five regional commissions since 1999.

Professor Klein initiated the work of this seminal LINK economic modelling system to integrate independently developed national models of over 80 countries, mostly prepared by his students and colleagues, into a world econometric model, which allowed the passing of flows between countries and areas through the world trade matrix, and thereby made possible the global forecasting of macro variables.

In early 1970s, his first female Ph.D. student, Dr. K. Marwah built a world trade model at UNCTAD under his guidance. Subsequently, the IMF and World Bank have started using his model, spearheaded by his PhD students, for making global and regional forecasts. In 1999, Dr. V.Pandit, another Ph.D. student of Klein, was appointed by the United Nations, as Chairman of the Committee on Policy Modelling for Less Developed Countries.

In 2005, Professor Klein delivered the 13th Raúl Prebisch Lecture, named after the first Secretary-General of UNCTAD, on the “South and East Asia: Leading the world economy”. In that visionary lecture, Professor Klein noted that “cooperation with UNCTAD and with the UN Secretariat, it has been an extremely fruitful working relationship between academia and international civil service to improve our understanding of the functioning of the total world economy”.

The Secretary-General of UNCTAD appointed him as a Chairman of a high-level Eminent Persons Group to advise the work of the United Nations on the measurement of global trade and development progress.

Since early 2000, Professor Klein coordinated a project at the University of Pennsylvania, with some of his PhD students including myself, to use the high-frequency macro variables, to develop a current quarter model (CQM) to track and forecast GDP, inflation and trade of major emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India, Turkey, South Korea, and which was later published in his edited book“The Making of National Economic Forecasts” in 2009. In recent years, Professor Klein often used to urge his students and colleagues who are now working in the UN system to make use of CQM for major developing countries to enhance our understanding of the current discourse on global interdependence.

Professor Klein created the modern Global Macro econometric modelling framework and technique: In 1980, Nobel committee wrote “Few, if any, research workers in the empirical field of economic science have had so many successors and such a large impact as Lawrence Klein.”

Professor Klein, did his PhD thesis under Professor Paul Samuelson, recalled once that event as “an unforgettable experience.” On a same note, I must humbly admit that Professor Klein's supervsion of my PhD thesis was "an extraordinarily unforgettable experience!"

In “A Celebration of Lawrence R. Klein: Students and Colleagues”, a Festschrift published in August 2013, which I had the honour of co-coordinating with his other two PhD students, Professor Joseph Stiglitz wrote “a person who has led a life of the mind—transforming our

understanding of macro-economics—but has a heart committed to using his intellect and energies to advance the well-being of society”.

Professor Klein's ideas and inspiration will be with all of us forever! For everything, and from all of us, thank you Professor Klein!

Picture below (clockwise): Launched UN report in Washington, DC; Dinner at our

house in Geneva with my mother; After defending my PhD thesis; and at UPenn campus with my wife.