Stockholm, Oct. 12(Greenpost)–Goran Hansson, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that Angus Deaton has won 2015 Sveriges Riksbank in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
“The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred
Nobel for 2015 to Aungus Deaton for his analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare.”
From Nobelprize.org.
Consumption, great and small
To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.
The work for which Deaton is now being honored revolves around three central questions: How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods?Answering this question is not only necessary for explaining and forecasting actual consumption patterns, but also crucial in evaluating how policy reforms, like changes in consumption taxes, affect the welfare of different groups. In his early work around 1980, Deaton developed the Almost Ideal Demand System – a flexible, yet simple, way of estimating how the demand for each good depends on the prices of all goods and on individual incomes. His approach and its later modifications are now standard tools, both in academia and in practical policy evaluation.
How much of society’s income is spent and how much is saved? To explain capital formation and the magnitudes of business cycles, it is necessary to understand the interplay between income and consumption over time. In a few papers around 1990, Deaton showed that the prevailing consumption theory could not explain the actual relationships if the starting point was aggregate income and consumption. Instead, one should sum up how individuals adapt their own consumption to their individual income, which fluctuates in a very different way to aggregate income. This research clearly demonstrated why the analysis of individual data is key to untangling the patterns we see in aggregate data, an approach that has since become widely adopted in modern macroeconomics.
How do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty? In his more recent research, Deaton highlights how reliable measures of individual household consumption levels can be used to discern mechanisms behind economic development. His research has uncovered important pitfalls when comparing the extent of poverty across time and place. It has also exemplified how the clever use of household data may shed light on such issues as the relationships between income and calorie intake, and the extent of gender discrimination within the family. Deaton’s focus on household surveys has helped transform development economics from a theoretical field based on aggregate data to an empirical field based on detailed individual data.
Angus Deaton, UK and US citizen. Born 1945 in Edinburgh, UK. Ph.D. 1974 from University of Cambridge, UK. Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Princeton University, NJ, USA, since 1983.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organisation whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.
Stockholm, Oct. 9(Greenpost)–The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is to be awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.
This was announced by Kaci Kullmann Five, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo on Friday.
Five further explained that the Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 when the democratization process was in danger of collapsing as a result of political assassinations and widespread social unrest.
“It established an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war. It was thus instrumental in enabling Tunisia, in the space of a few years, to establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental rights for the entire population, irrespective of gender, political conviction or religious belief.” said Five.
The National Dialogue Quartet has comprised four key organizations in Tunisian civil society: the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT, Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail), the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA, Union Tunisienne de l’Industrie, du Commerce et de l’Artisanat), the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH, La Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme), and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers (Ordre National des Avocats de Tunisie). These organizations represent different sectors and values in Tunisian society: working life and welfare, principles of the rule of law and human rights. On this basis, the Quartet exercised its role as a mediator and driving force to advance peaceful democratic development in Tunisia with great moral authority. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is awarded to this Quartet, not to the four individual organizations as such.
The Arab Spring originated in Tunisia in 2010-2011, but quickly spread to a number of countries in North Africa and the Middle East. In many of these countries, the struggle for democracy and fundamental rights has come to a standstill or suffered setbacks. Tunisia, however, has seen a democratic transition based on a vibrant civil society with demands for respect for basic human rights.
An essential factor for the culmination of the revolution in Tunisia in peaceful, democratic elections last autumn was the effort made by the Quartet to support the work of the constituent assembly and to secure approval of the constitutional process among the Tunisian population at large. The Quartet paved the way for a peaceful dialogue between the citizens, the political parties and the authorities and helped to find consensus-based solutions to a wide range of challenges across political and religious divides. The broad-based national dialogue that the Quartet succeeded in establishing countered the spread of violence in Tunisia and its function is therefore comparable to that of the peace congresses to which Alfred Nobel refers in his will.
The course that events have taken in Tunisia since the fall of the authoritarian Ben Ali regime in January 2011 is unique and remarkable for several reasons. Firstly, it shows that Islamist and secular political movements can work together to achieve significant results in the country’s best interests. The example of Tunisia thus underscores the value of dialogue and a sense of national belonging in a region marked by conflict. Secondly, the transition in Tunisia shows that civil society institutions and organizations can play a crucial role in a country’s democratization, and that such a process, even under difficult circumstances, can lead to free elections and the peaceful transfer of power. The National Dialogue Quartet must be given much of the credit for this achievement and for ensuring that the benefits of the Jasmine Revolution have not been lost.
Tunisia faces significant political, economic and security challenges. The Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes that this year’s prize will contribute towards safeguarding democracy in Tunisia and be an inspiration to all those who seek to promote peace and democracy in the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the world. More than anything, the prize is intended as an encouragement to the Tunisian people, who despite major challenges have laid the groundwork for a national fraternity which the Committee hopes will serve as an example to be followed by other countries, said Five.
Stockholm, Oct. 8(Greenpost)—Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of Swedish Academy Thursday announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2015 is awarded to the Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich ”for her polyphonic writings, a momument to suffering and courage in our time.”
Video from Nobelprize.org.
In an interview with Greenpost, Danius said there are several reasons for her to win the prize and one of the reasons will be enough.
”She is offering us a whole new and very interesting historical material, she is devoted almost 40 years to exploring Soviet Individual and Post Soviet Individual, but she is not interested in events.”
The events she covers for example the Chernobyl disaster, Second World War, these are pretext for exploring what history does to the individual, where individual life intersects with the course of historical events.
”What she is really interested in is the soul of events, of the inner life of individuals, that’s what she has been uncover book after book. ”
Svetlana Alexievich was born on 31 May 1948 in the Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk, as the daughter of a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother. When the father had completed his military service, the family moved to Belarus, where both parents worked as teachers.
After finishing school, Alexievich worked as a teacher and as a journalist, and she studied journalism at the University of Minsk between 1967-1972.
After her graduation she was referred to a local newspaper in Brest near the Polish border, because of her oppositional views. She later returned to Minsk and began an employment at the newspaper Sel’skaja Gazeta. For many years, she collected materials for her first book in 1985 and then published in English as War’s Unwomanly Face in 1988 which is based on interviews with
hundreds of women who participated in the Second World War.
She has conducted thousands of interviews over the years with man and women and children, she always keeps herself in the background unlike most journalists,
She doesn’t add any material of her own. All that we get are these voices and they have been edited because she really wants to bring out sort of the innermost life of individual, and then she composes these voices in a delicate way, this is some kind of musical composition.
Danius said Alexievich’s achievement is also to create this new genre of writing.
Her first book was called Wars Unwomenly Face which was sold two million copies depicting about the one million Soviet women red army who fought alongside with male soldiers, and then returned to civil society, but they didn’t get the recognition they deserved.
This work is the first in Alexievich’s grand cycle of books, “Voices of Utopia”, where life in the Soviet Union is depicted from the perspective of the individual.
By means of her extraordinary method – a carefully composed collage of human voices –Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era. The consequences of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl 1986 is the topic of Voices from Chernobyl –Chronicle of the Future, 1999).
Zinky Boys – Soviet voices from a forgotten war, 1992 is a portrayal of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan 1979–89, and her work “Second-hand Time: The Demise of the Red (Wo)man”) is the latest in “Voices of Utopia”. Another early book that also belongs in this life long project is “Last witnesses”.
Important influences on Alexievich’s work are the notes by the nurse and author Sofia Fedorchenko (1888–1959) of soldiers’ experiences in the First World War, and the documentary reports by the Belarusian author Ales Adamovich (1927–1994) from the Second World War.
Because of her criticism of the regime, Alexievich has periodically lived abroad, in Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden, among other places.
The Swedish Academy has a tradition that all the journalists will squeeze around the platform to wait for the news.
They also invited some children from Rinkby school where Chinese writer Mo Yan who won the Nobel Prize in 2012 had been.
Nobel Prize is seen as a way to promote science and literature as well as world Peace.
Stockholm, Oct. 7(Greenpost)–Goran Hansson, permanent secretory of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Wednesday announced that Swedish scientist Lindahl and American scientist Modrich and Sancar won 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
推介会上，中国致公党南京市委会副主委刘军介绍说，中国实行的是在中国共产党领导下的多党合作制。致公党是1925年在美国旧金山成立的。是中国唯一一个在海外成立的政党。孙中山先生曾经对致公党作出重大贡献。现在，致公党主席是科技部长万钢。今年致公党已经建立90周年了。近几年，海归知识分子也是致公党发展的对象。主要致力于维护归国侨眷的合法权益和利益。
南京海外联谊会副会长李跃芝介绍了南京市科技发展状况，宣讲了海外留学人员回国就创业相关政策，邀请留学人员学成以后来南京创业就业，为实现中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦南京新篇章贡献力量。
瑞典华人总会叶沛群出席推介会并对推介会的举办表示祝贺。
为更好地推动引凤工程的进展，增强双方之间的沟通和联系，南京代表团一行聘请6位博士生（潘序菲，刘子昊，鲁金直，童善林，赵丹和黄斯斯）做为中国致公党南京市委员会海外联谊工作的联络员。
