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Nobel Laureate joins Economics department

Nobel Laureate Professor Kenneth J. Arrow of Stanford University in the US has joined the Department of Economics as an honorary professor.

In 1972, Professor Arrow and Sir John R. Hicks shared the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded in memory of Alfred Nobel, for their contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory.

Department of Economics head Professor Tony Dingle said his team was thrilled Professor Arrow had accepted the invitation to join the Faculty of Business and Economics.

"It is a huge honour to have an economist of Professor Arrow's stature associated with our department because, through the association, he is lending his support to our work," Professor Dingle said.

"Professor Arrow is a pioneer in the economic sciences, particularly general equilibrium and social choice theories. His work has paved the way for generations of academics and economics students. He is also credited with major works in the areas of growth theory and decision theory."

Professor Arrow already has an association with Monash through economics Professor Yew-Kwang Ng, who has conducted welfare economics seminars at the universities of Stanford and Harvard, at Professor Arrow's invitation.

Professor Arrow is the second Nobel Laureate to collaborate with the university's Economics department. In 2002, Nobel Laureate Professor James Buchanan, from George Mason University in the US, organised a workshop about an analytical framework pioneered by Professor Ng and Professor Xiaokai Yang from Monash's Economics department.