| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Jorge G. Castañeda | | | Institution: | New York University; National Autonomous University of Mexico | | | Year Elected: | 2008 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 304. Jurisprudence and Political Science | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Jorge G. Castañeda has been Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University since 1997. He was Foreign Minister of Mexico for three years under the Vicente Fox administration and served as professor of political science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico from 1978 to 2003. He has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, Cambridge University, the University of Paris and Dartmouth University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris in 1978.
For three decades Jorge Castañeda has been a leading public intellectual, publishing widely in French, English and Spanish. He is the author of numerous books on political mobilization, political succession and international relations. Limits To Friendship: The United States and Mexico (1988) outlines the difficulties of foreign relations with a superpower; The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the United States (1995) examines the ways in which free trade has affected binational issues; and Perpetuating Power: How Mexican Presidents Were Chosen (2000) elucidates the byzantine process by which Mexico’s ruling party selected its presidents. He is also the author of Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War (1993) and Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (1997). His most recent book is Ex Mex: Mexicans in the U.S. – from Migrants to Immigrants (2008).
Jorge Castañeda was an outspoken critic of the country’s autocratic political system prior to its transition to open elections in 2000. He has been active with a number of human rights organizations, serving on the board of directors of Human Rights Watch, as a member of Project Syndicate, and as senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Grant in 1989. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Menahem E. Yaari | | | Institution: | The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Hebrew University of Jerusalem | | | Year Elected: | 2008 | | | Class: | 3. Social Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 302. Economics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Menahem Yaari is a former President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and S.A. Schonbrunn Professor of Mathematical Economics Emeritus at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1962) and taught at Yale University from 1962-67. Yaari's seminal work is his 1965 paper "Uncertain Lifetime, Life Insurance, and the Theory of the Consumer," in which he developed a pioneering model of optimum saving under uncertainty about longevity and the role of competitive annuity markets. The paper became a classic and its central theorem that individuals should invest all their savings in deferred annuities has started a new branch of economic theory with numerous articles and thousands of citations. The paper, "A Model of Fixed Capital without Substitution", written jointly with two Nobel-prize winners, Solow and Tobin, and with Ch. V. Weisazacker, made a major contribution to the theory of technical progress and growth. It formulated the first model of technical progress embodied in capital, leading to a shift in theory and empirical studies towards the need for replacing functioning equipment that has become obsolete. His paper on "Changing Tastes" is recognized as a forerunner of the modern theory of behavioral economics (bounded rationality). Finally, his paper on "The Dual Theory of Choice under Risk" has developed a new widely used game-theoretic approach to decision and measures of risk aversion. Yaari's election as head of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities is a recognition of his standing and contributions to Israeli academia and to intellectual discourse in the country. He is also a member of the International Scientific Committee of the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization, which works to bring together Israeli and Palestinian scholars, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1988). Menahem Yaari was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008. | |
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