Lars Peter Hansen, one of the three winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, is to visit Taiwan next year, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER) president Wu Chung-shu (吳中書) said.
Hansen is the son-in-law of Chiang Shou-chieh (蔣碩傑), the institution’s founder and first chairman, Wu added.
The CIER will invite Hansen, a professor at the University of Chicago, to attend a series of activities commemorating the 20th anniversary of Chiang’s death next year, Wu said.
Saying that Hansen has visited the country many times, Wu said that in addition to attending various Taiwan-sponsored international economic forums, the Nobel laureate has come to Taiwan before to see relatives or attend events commemorating his late father-in-law.
Chiang, a renowned economist who was an academic at Academia Sinica and a trusted economic adviser to former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1982.
Wu said Hansen winning this year’s prize could be seen as redress for Chiang Shou-chieh not receiving the coveted award.
Hansen is a cofounder of the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago, which builds on the legacy of Milton Friedman.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave the Nobel to Hansen and fellow US economists Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller on Monday for their research on how financial markets work and how assets are priced.
The three economists “laid the foundation for the current understanding of asset prices,” the academy said.
Their work spans almost 50 years, beginning with the finding made by Fama, who is also at the University of Chicago, that it is difficult to predict price movements in the short run. That conclusion forms the basis for the theory that financial markets are efficient and led to the development of stock-index funds.
Wu said that Shiller, 67, a Yale University professor, has also visited Taiwan several times, most recently in May to attend a seminar in Taipei. In November last year, he delivered a keynote speech at a forum sponsored by a local magazine.
Lin Ming-jen (林明仁), an associate professor of economics at National Taiwan University, said that he once attended a class given by Hansen while he was doing a doctorate at the University of Chicago.
“Hansen is a true master in both economics and finance,” Lin said.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota on Monday said Hansen’s “remarkably general empirical methods free researchers from the need to make a range of empirically implausible statistical assumptions about the data that they are studying.”
Hansen served as Kocherlakota’s adviser at the University of Chicago.
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
Reports of Taiwanese going missing, being detained or interrogated, or having their personal liberties restricted in China increased about fourfold annually last year, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. Last year, 221 Taiwanese who traveled to China were reported missing, were detained and interrogated, or otherwise had their personal freedom restricted, up from 55 the previous year, the council said. Reopening group tours to China would be risky, as it would leave travelers with no way to seek help through official channels after Beijing shut down dialogue between the associations tasked with handling cross-strait tourism, the MAC said. Taipei’s Taiwan Strait Tourism
RSS