Uruguay It has a large number of economists, men and women, who stand out for their high academic caliber, works of enormous importance, precision in the analysis, or even great ability for dissemination. However, only one of them appears in the overall ranking of citations of academic articles Ideas/Repec.
Is about Carlos Vegh, Former World Bank Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. The winner of the Carlos Díaz-Alejandro de Lacea award stayed in March at the post 916 –with 983.85 points– in a list of more than 3,300 world economists and was the only Uruguayan in the ranking of the largest bibliographic database dedicated to economics.
The list, which includes 10% of the most prominent economists on the planet, is headed by the Russian-American from Harvard, andrei schleifer; the American from the University of Chicago, james heckmann; the Turk Daron Acemoglu from MIT; followed by Joseph E Stiglitz (Columbia University) and robert barro (Harvard).
Who is Carlos Vegh?
Carlos Veghgraduate American University in 1983 and doctorate in the University of Chicago in 1987, is a world-renowned economist who, since 2013, has served as professor and researcher at John Hopkins University. He spent much of his life abroad, where he also worked for international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Since he was born, in 1958, in Montevideo, Carlos was part of a family with a strong economic tradition: his father was the late Minister of Economy Alejandro Vegh Villegasand his grandfather, Carlos Vegh GarzonHe was also a fleeting minister of the portfolio and president of Banco República (BROU).
Végh was proud to have completed his doctoral thesis under the supervision of the historical Jacob Frenkel and was co-author of the Argentine-American William Bald in different texts. His work has important contributions in terms of inflationary stabilization, monetary policy and optimal exchange systems.
On February 1, 2017, the Montevidean’s career reached a fundamental milestone: he was designated as World Bank Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean and thus became the first Uruguayan in history to reach that chair, which he left more than two years later, on June 30, 2019.
In 2021, he won the Carlos Diaz-Alejandro Award awarded by the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (Lacea), the most prestigious economic award in the region – also, the first Uruguayan to obtain it. On several occasions, Végh affirmed that the biggest current macroeconomic problem in Uruguay and in the vast majority of Latin American countries is the “procyclicality of fiscal policy“.
“Carlos is a world-renowned economist who has written extensively on issues that touch the heart of macroeconomics in Latin America and the Caribbean: from hyperinflation until balance of payments crisis, currency substitution, fiscal policy and exchange policy”, Lacea described when presenting him with the award.
Source: Ambito
