Erik Thorbecke
Emeritus Professor
2009
NS CALS

Web Bio Page

Current Activities

Current Professional Activities
During 2009 Erik Thorbecke was closely involved in research activities of the African Economic Research Consortium ( AERC), as a member of a Steering Committee of a large scale research project on Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Africa. He also chaired the thematic research group of the AERC on "Poverty, Income Distribution and Labor Markets", at both bi-annual workshops in Nairobi in June and in December, 2009.

Secondly, Erik Thorbecke continued to be active as  co-director of a program of research on "The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor" under the auspices of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER). He co-edited a volume on "The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America and Africa".

Erik Thorbecke made a number of presentations, among others, in Accra (Ghana) and was the keynote speaker at an international conference on "The Measurement of Social Progress" in Mexico-city.

Erik continues to be a member of the Avisory Committee of the Institute for African Development at Cornell.



Current Research Activities
See text above on current professional activities.

Biography

Biographical Statement
Erik Thorbecke is the H.E. Babcock Professor of Economics and Food Economics Emeritus and former Director of the Program on Comparative Economic Development at Cornell University. He is presently a Graduate School Professor. His past positions include chairman of the Department of Economics at Cornell, a professorship at Iowa State University, and associate assistant administrator for program policy at the Agency for International Development. He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Ghent in 1981. He has made contributions in the areas of economic and agricultural development, the measurement and analysis of poverty and malnutrition, the Social Accounting Matrix and general equilibrium modeling, and international economic policy.
The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measure (Econometrica, 1984) has been adopted as the standard poverty measure by the World Bank and practically all UN agencies and is used almost universally by researchers doing empirical work on poverty. The F-G-T measure was recently incorporated in the Mexican Constitution and used to allocate inter-regionally federal government funds to educational, health and nutritional programs benefiting the poor. Over the last four years he has co-directed a large scale research project on "The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor" under the auspices of the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research. He has also continued his research on multidimensional poverty.
He is the author or co-author of more than twenty three books and over one hundred and fifty articles.

Keywords
Poverty mesure, poverty analysis, globalization and poverty, economic and agricultural development, international economics

Courses, Websites, Pubs

Related Websites
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/econ/et17/

Selected Publications
Nissanke M. and E Thorbecke, “Introduction: Globalization-Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa in African Development Review vol. 20, issue 1, April 2008

Nissanke M. and E Thorbecke (editors), Globalization and the Poor in Asia: Can Shared Growth Be Sustained?, Basingtoke Palgrave McMillan, 2008

"Economic Development, Equality, Income Distribution and Ethics" in P. Pinstrup-Andersen and P Sandoe (editors), Ethics, Hunger, and Globalization. Springer, 2007

‘Overview’, in M. Nissanke and E. Thorbecke (eds) The Impact of Globalization on the World’s Poor: The Transmission Mechanisms, Palgrave Macmillan for UNU/WIDER, 2007

The Impact of Globalization on the World’s Poor (M. Nissanke and E. Thorbecke, Editors) Palgrave MacMillan, 2007

The Impact of Globalization on the World’s Poor. Special Issue of World Development. Guest Editors M. Nissanke and E Thorbecke, vol. 34, No. 8, August, 2006

“Channels and Policy Debate in the Globalization-Inequality- Poverty Nexus” (with M. Nissanke) in World Development vol. 34, No. 8, August 2006

“Economic Development, Equality, Income Distribution, and Ethics” in M. Altman (Editor), Handbook of Behavioral Economics, M.E. Sharpe, 2006

“Rural Development, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa” (with Germano Mwabu) Journal of African Economies, vol.13, Suppl.1, 2004

“Economic Inequality and Its Socio-Economic Impact” (with Chutatong Charumilind), World Development, Vol. 30, No. 9, September 2002.

Taiwan’s Development Experience: Lessons on Roles of Government and Market (with H. Wan, (Eds.) Kluwer Academic Publishers, May 1999.

“A Multiplier Decomposition Method to Analyze Poverty Alleviation", (with H-S Jung) Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 48, No. 2, 1996, pp. 253 277.

State, Market and Civil Organizations: new theories, new practices, and their implications for rural development. (with de Janvry and E. Sadoulet, Eds.), London: Macmillan, 1995, 511 pp.

Intersectoral Linkages and their Impact on Rural Poverty Alleviation: A Social Accounting Matrix Approach, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Vienna, 1995, 99 pp.

Budgetary Rules to Minimize Societal Poverty" (with D. Berrian), Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 39, No. 2, October 1992, pp. 189-205.

Adjustment and Equity in Indonesia, (with collaborators), OECD Development Center, Paris, 1992,
264 pp.

The Role of Institutions in Economic Development, (coeditor with I. Adelman,), Special Issue of World Development, September 1989

"Food Poverty Profile Applied to Kenyan Smallholders," (with Joel Greer) Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 35, No. 1, October 1986, pp. 115 141.

"A Methodology for Measuring Food Poverty Applied to Kenya," (with Joel Greer) Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 24, 1986, pp. 59 74.

"The Social Accounting Matrix and Consistency Type Development Planning Models", in: Social Accounting Matrices, A Basis for Planning, (edited by Graham Pyatt and Jeffery I. Round), The World Bank, 1985.

"A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures", (with James Foster and Joel Greer) Econometrica, Vol. 52, No. 3, May 1984, pp. 761 766.

"Structural Path Analysis and Multiplier Decomposition within a Social Accounting Matrix Framework," (with Jacques Defourny) The Economic Journal, 94, March 1984, pp. 111 136.

Planning Techniques for a Better Future, (with Graham Pyatt), ILO, Geneva, 1976, (hardback and paperback versions).

"A Ten Region Model of World Trade", (with A. Field, invited paper for Essays in Honor of Jan Tinbergen, edited by W. Sellekaerts, MacMillan International, 1974).

The Theory of Quantitative Economic Policy with Application to Economic Growth Stabilization and Planning, with K.A. Fox, J.K. Sengupta (thoroughly revised edition, North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam) 1973.

"Unemployment and Underemployment in the Developing World", testimony before the Foreign Economic Policy Subcommittee of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, May 1970 (in A Foreign Economic Policy for the 1970's, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy of the Joint Economic Committee, May 1970, pp. 704 719).

The Role of Agriculture in Economic Development, (editor, Conference volume, Universities National Bureau of Economic Research, Columbia University Press), 1969, 480 pp.

President's Science Advisory Committee, Report on the World Food Problem, major author of chapter on Economic Implications, White House, 1967