By Wang Yuan

Special to the Tsinghua News Center

2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics Eric S. Maskin was named an honorary professor of Tsinghua University on November 8, 2007. The awarding ceremony was held at the Main Building of the University. Tsinghua Vice President Hu Heping awarded the letter of appointment to the distinguished economist.

Born in New York City in 1950, Eric S. Maskin is currently the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science, at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S. Along with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson, Professor Maskin received the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory." Maskin earned his B.A. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1972, his M.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1974, and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1976. He received an honorary M.A. from Cambridge University in 1977. He was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1981, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and Fellow of the European Economic Association in 2004. Maskin’s work in economic theory has had a deep influence on many areas of economics, political science, and law. His current focus is work on mechanism design, repeated games, income inequality, and the theory of voting.

Professor Maskin supervised five Chinese students when he worked at Harvard University in the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. They are all renowned economists now; more interestingly, all of them currently are faculty members of Tsinghua SEM. They are Professor Qian Yingyi, Professor Bai Chong-en, Professor Li Daokui, Professor Wang Yijiang and Professor Xu Chenggang.

Professor Qian Yingyi, Dean of School of Economics and Management presided over the ceremony. In his speech, Dean Qian said he was “lucky to be the first Chinese students under Professor Maskin's supervision, and Tsinghua is lucky to have all these five students as faculty members at School of Economics and Management."    

In his remarks, Professor Maskin said, the most important connection for him at Tsinghua is that "five people who matter most to me are connected with Tsinghua." He said his five Chinese students now are "really part of his family”; and he is "very happy to see how well economics education is progressing in China and Tsinghua is playing an important role on that".

After the conferring ceremony, Professor Hu Heping presented Professor Maskin with a souvenir on behalf of the University. The 2007 Nobel Laureate then delivered a speech entitled “why do we procrastinate” and answered questions from the audience later.

(Photo by Guo Haijun)