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Professor Xiaokai Yang inaugural memorial lecture

5 October 2005

A memorial lecture in honour of the founding director of the Monash Centre for Increasing Returns and Economic Organisation, Professor Xiaokai Yang, has been held following the first anniversary of his death.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins with Professor Sonnenschein.

Professor Yang (pictured below) was internationally recognised as a leading theorist in economic analysis and was nominated for the 2002 and 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics. He died on 7 July 2004.

The memorial lecture, established by Monash to honour Professor Yang, was presented last week as one of only three plenary lectures at the National Conference of Economists.

Vice-chancellor Professor Richard Larkins introduced the lecture, which was presented by the Adam Smith distinguished service professor and president emeritus of the University of Chicago, Professor Hugo Sonnenschein.

Professor Sonnenschein is one of the world's leading general equilibrium theorists and was one of Professor Yang's teachers at Princeton University.

His lecture questioned the robustness of key theoretical predictions of traditional trade theory and, in particular, the Rybczynski Theorem.

Professor Sonnenschein said the project was inspired by the writings of Professor Yang.

Professor Yang came to Monash as a lecturer in 1988 and was awarded a personal chair in 2000.

His work is highly regarded by fellow economists and won considerable attention and international repute for Monash.

The executive director of the Centre for Increasing Returns and Economic Organisation, Dr Christis Tombazos, said the lecture was a fitting tribute to the memory and intellectual legacy of Professor Yang.

"It was an occasion to celebrate the work of one of Monash's most distinguished scholars, but also -- very much in the spirit of what Xiaokai would have wanted -- an occasion to reflect on the key questions of economic theory," Dr Tombazos said.

The Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the Xiaokai Yang Memorial Fund, the Department of Economics, the Monash Vice-Chancellor's Fund and the Institute for the Study of Global Movements.