Prof Kydland in the wonderland of Indian management
By Our Economy Bureau | 20 Jan 2005
Chennai: For Prof. Finn E Kydland, the joint winner of the 2004 economics Nobel Prize winner for his work on the impact of technological innovations / inventions or `shocks' on business cycles, his Indian visit has turned out to be a pleasant shock.
His scheduled 20 minute meeting with president Dr A P J Abdul Kalam was extended by an hour with Kalam actively participating in the discussion citing India's achievements. The Nobel laureate also met finance minister P Chidambaram, planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and the Reserve Bank governor Y V Reddy. Kydland also found time to visit Jaipur and its famous forts.
The purpose of Prof. Kydland's visit was to participate in the foundation ceremony of the Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) promoted by his friend Prof. Bala Balachandran, Kellogg Graduate School.
A professor in the Tepper School of Business administration, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, Prof. Kydland will be the honorary head of the economic related research at the Yale-GLIM Centre for Management Research. However it is still undecided whether Prof. Kydland would be visiting the school at regular intervals to lecture the students.
According to him, developing countries on the reform path should look at long term goals rather than short term while formulating their policies. He feels that India can learn from Argentina's experience in this regard.
The Nobel laureate also said that countries are now better prepared to meet the oil price hike unlike the period of the first oil shock in 1970. According to Prof. Kydland, the type of shocks having permanent impact is that of technological change. "Anything that changes the relationship between capital and the labour on the one hand and the goods and services on the other.
