Professor PremaChandra Athukorala A Tribute Sarath Rajapatirana Introduction
Professor Prema-Chandra Athukorala : A Tribute Sarath Rajapatirana
Introduction �I am honored and privileged to pay a tribute to a great scholar, a superb co-author and a very good friend to many of you in this audience. �Ten minutes are not enough to pay a tribute to Professor Prema-Chandra Athukorala. � I thank Professor Hal Hill, Dr. Jay Menon and Professor Sisira Jayasuriya for orchestrating the writing of this festschrift. �That it was a total surprise to him speaks volumes of the discretion of the very distinguished authors who contributed papers to this book. 2
My connection to Professor Athukorala � I first met Chandra in Singapore in 1985, when he became a part of team of authors contributing to the World Bank Comparative Study on Liberalizing Trade led by Professor Michaely, Demitris Papageorgiou and Armeane Choksi. � I was an adviser to the project. So when there was the first meeting of the authors in Singapore I got a chance to meet Chandra. There were heavy hitters on trade there such as Professors Robert Baldwin, Jacob Frankel, Michael Mussa, Alan Meltzer, Arnold Harberger, to name a few. Among the researchers and authors were Sandy Cuthbertson, Premachandra Athukorala, Stephen Guisinger, Domingo Cavallo, Julio Nogues, Mark Pitt, Edgardo Favaro et al. � When the research plans and approaches were discussed I saw that the best comments were made by my countryman-Chandra, whom I had just met. So when I put in charge of the World Bank’s Comparative Study with Professors Ian Little, Max Corden and Richard Cooper, I bargained with Max to have Chandra if he were to have Sisira. So this was for me a most important event. Their work on Macroeconomic experience of Sri Lanka is still the best work on the topic. � I gained a lot by coming to know Chandra and Sisria very well. So I got lucky to come to know Chandra and Sisira. So it is the starting point of my tribute today. 3
What I plan to say in this Tribute �Now I will speak about Professor Athukorala’s achievements as a Scholar. �How it is to be a co-author with him. �And, to have Chandra as a friend. 4
Professor Athukorala-The scholar � When Paul Samuelson was asked to write a recommendation for Joseph Stiglitz as one of his students at MIT , he wrote one sentence only. “ Joe Stiglitz is the best economist out of Gary, Indiana”. It got his first job at Princeton. Because every one knew Samuelson was born in Gary Indiana. � So we can easily write a collective recommendation for Chandra saying Professor Athukorala is the best economist out of Sri Lanka ever. There is ample evidence to support our claim. He has the most scholarly peer-reviewed publications in now in excess of 100 plus papers, more than 1000 and growing citations and actual ground level international experience studying a lot of countries from Sri Lanka to Ethiopia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India among others. � He is the author and co-author of ten books, edited five books and published sixty three chapters in books. � And, he has carved out a new and frontier territory on the microeconomics of exporting activity and global production sharing at the ground level from Penang to Singapore, Biyagama to Koggala and Colombo , � Thus he has claimed for himself the high ground of new international division of labor in global production sharing. Note that Chandra does not use the popular and inaccurate term “value chains”. Who wants to be in chains anyway ? Nor does he talk endlessly about “increasing value added” another mistaken and dangerous notion. He is not an enthusiast for signing free trade agreements with every possible country. � In their quest for kudos our high end-political class does not pause to think whether it is optimal trade policy to sign agreements with everyone. � He has made seminal contributions to macroeconomics of developing countries and explored the trade and investment nexus and applied his considerable facility with econometrics to bring home sound analytical work to raise the bar for everyone working in these fields. � I have called him the “guiding star of empirical research in Asia” in my essay in the festschrift. � Before we complete the scholar aspect of Chandra I want to record that his is a voracious reader of literary work both in English and Sinhala. He may be reading in excess of a book a week. In a recent interview of Bill Gates by Charlie Rose in the Bloomberg program, Gates said he reads a book a week ! So he is in good company. 5
Professor Athukorala-The Co-author � Chandra and I have written one book and four papers. � He does the heavy lifting and actually does not need me to write. � Each one has been for me an uplifting experience. I have learned so much from him. So he is as Hal says “maha guru”. A Guthila without being jealous of his students, which was anyway unbecoming of a Bodhisatva”. � We wrote our book “Liberalization and Industrial Transformation: Sri Lanka in International Perspective”. OUP 2000. This was done through email drafts and getting together for two weeks in Canberra at the end with Soma keeping us well fed and in comfort. � So five of the citations I have got, I owe to Chandra. He raises your game and gets you the credit. � We his co-authors bask in the glory he creates by being such a well respected author. 6
Professor Athukorala: The Friend �Chandra is a great friend. Always ready to listen and to help with ideas , ways to approach a research question and provide you at short notice guides to what to read and how to do and set about the research. Then send you a reading list to boot. �He is generous to a fault and ever ready to help. Max Corden is a great fan and a friend of Chandra. He told me the greatest honor he has received was to be made an uncle at Chaturica’s wedding ceremony. �He went on talking about it with me for weeks. So I now call him Uncle Max ! 7
To Conclude �No tribute to Chandra can be complete without referring to his wonderful family. Soma , Chintaka and Chaturica. He is a great dad and now a grand dad. He is now a tunseeya (grand dad three times) ! �So we salute you, our friend, co-author and scholar-a guiding star of empirical research on Asia. �We wish you long and productive life now that you have come close to emeritus status. And, wish you will make more frequent and longer visits to these shores !!! �To conclude I want to thank Saman and IPS staff for hosting this event and giving me the privilege of speaking to you this afternoon. And thank all of you in the audience.
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