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Yale professor gives Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture

25 October 2006

Yale University's Professor George Mailath (left) and Monash's Associate Professor Christis Tombazos at this year's Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture.

The community of Australian economists paid tribute to the late Professor Xiaokai Yang, the founding director of the Monash Centre for Increasing Returns and Economic Organisation (CIREO), in Perth recently where a memorial lecture was delivered in his honour.

Professor Yang was a leading theorist in economic analysis. An internationally recognised researcher, his work was highly regarded by fellow economists and won him considerable attention and international repute, including nominations for the 2002 and 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics. Sadly, Xiaokai Yang passed away on 7 July 2004.

The memorial lecture, established by Monash to honour the significant contributions Professor Yang made through his research, is presented annually at the Australian Conference of Economists. This year's lecture was delivered by the Alfred Cowles Professor of Economics at Yale University, Professor George Mailath.

Professor Mailath is one of the world's leading game and microeconomic theorists, and, like Professor Yang, also completed his doctoral studies at Princeton. Both Professor Yang and Professor Mailath were taught by Professor Sonnenschein, who delivered the inaugural memorial lecture last year. Professor Mailath's lecture examined the two views of reputation prevalent in economic literature -- one motivated by repeated game considerations, and the other by incomplete information.

Associate Professor Christis Tombazos, who is currently the executive director of CIREO, said the lecture was a fitting tribute to the memory and intellectual legacy of Professor Yang.

"Professor Yang's work on inframarginal analysis has contributed to what is turning out to be a paradigm shift in economics," Associate Professor Tombazos said.

"This area continues to gain new ground every day. It is increasingly represented in leading journals and the most prestigious international conferences. Research on inframarginal economics continues to be one of the key research strengths of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash.

"Professor Yang was a rare individual. Everything about him was special -- his brilliance, his humanity, his generosity and his seemingly pathological concentration on things that matter, at the exclusion of almost everything else. He spent a decade of his life in a Chinese prison and then produced a body of work that earned him nominations for the 2002 and 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics by at least one previous Nobel laureate.

"It is wonderful that we are able to formally recognise Professor Yang's contributions to our university and the world's community of scholars through this memorial lecture."

The Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture is jointly 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.