Vela Velupillai
Kumaraswamy (Vela) Velupillai (born 1947 Colombo, Sri Lanka) is an academic economist.
He is a Professor of Economics - 'Professore di Chiara Fama' - in the department of economics at the University of Trento, Italy. Till recently he was the John E. Cairnes Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway and a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. He is concurrently a standing Senior Visiting Professor at the Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India.[1]
Current work
His current work is almost entirely devoted to Computable Economics, Macroeconomic Theory and the History and Philosophy of Economics. Within Computable Economics, his major focus has been an attempt to mathematize economic theory - both micro and macro theory - using the methods of recursion theory and constructive mathematics.
Education
His high school education was at Royal College Colombo. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan; he obtained a Master's degree in economics at the Department of Economics, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden and a PhD in economics at Cambridge University (King's College). His PhD supervisor, initially, was Lord Kaldor and, subsequently, and decisively, Richard Goodwin.
Academic posts
He has held tenured and visiting appointments at the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy, UCLA, the People's University in Beijing and several other European Universities and Research Institutions. He is the founder of the Algorithmic Social Sciences Research Unit[2] at the University of Trento.
A Festschrift in Vela Velupillai's honour, Computable, Constructive and Behavioural Economic Dynamics,[3] edited by Stefano Zambelli, was recently published by Routledge.
Influences
He lists, in an autobiographical statement, the Economists he has met and who have influenced him in particular ways.[4] They include the following:
- Björn Thalberg: The Oslo traditions of Ragnar Frisch and Trygve Haavelmo
- Robert Clower, John McCall, and Dick Day: Critical traditions of American Macroeconomics
- Lance Taylor: Development Economics
- Herbert Simon: who commented favourably on Velupillai's Computable Economics.[5]
- Tony Lawson: Economic Methodology
Other influences but with less personal connection: Gunnar Myrdal, John Hicks and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.
Key books
- Nonlinear and Mutisectoral Macrodynamics: Essays in Honour of Richard Goodwin. (edited) Macmillan, London, 1989.
- Computable Economics (The Fourth Arne Ryde Lectures) Oxford University Press, January, 2000.
- Computable Foundations for Economics, Routledge, February, 2010.[6]
- The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics: The Elgar Companion to Computable Economics, Editor (with the assistance of: Stephen Kinsella & Stefano Zambelli, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, November, 2011
Main articles
- "Irving Fisher on `Switches of Techniques´: A Historical Note", Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 4, November, pp. 679–680, 1975.
- "Rationality, Computability and Complexity", (with B. Rustem), Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol. 14, No. 2, May, pp. 419–432, 1990.
- “The Vintage Economist”, The Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, Vol.37, No.1, Sep., pp. 1–31, 1998.
- “Richard Goodwin: 1913-1996”, The Economic Journal, Vol. 108, September, 1998, pp. 1436–1449.
- “Effectivity and Constructivity in Economic Theory”, The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol.49, Issue, 3, pp. 307–325, November, 2002.
- Velupillai, K. V. (2005). "The unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in economics". Cambridge Journal of Economics 29 (6): 849–872. doi:10.1093/cje/bei084. edit
- Velupillai, K. (2006). "Algorithmic foundations of computable general equilibrium theory☆". Applied Mathematics and Computation 179: 360–369. doi:10.1016/j.amc.2005.11.113. edit
- “A Disequilibrium Macrodynamic Model of Fluctuations”, Journal of Macroeconomics, Vol. 28, Issue 4, December, pp. 752–767, 2006.
- “Japanese Contributions to Non-Linear Cycle Theory in the 1950s”, Japanese Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, March, pp. 54–74, 2008.
- “Sraffa’s Constructive Mathematical Economics”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 15, No.4, December, pp. 325–348, 2008.
- “The Mathematization of Macroeconomics”, Economia Politica [Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics], Vol. XXV, Issue 3, August, pp. 283–316, 2008.
- “Uncomputability and Undecidability in Economic Theory”, Applied Mathematics and Computation, Vol. 215, Issue 4, 15 October, pp. 1404–1416, 2009.
- "In Praise of Fostering Anarchy in Research and Teaching", Economic and Political Weekly, vol XIV, no.14, April 3, 2010.
- "Development Economics without Growth Theory", Economia Politica[Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics], Vol.XXVII, Issue 1,9-54, 2010.
- "Foundations of Boundedly Rational Choice and Satisficing Decisions", Advances in Decision Sciences, April, 2010.
- "Towards an Algorithmic Revolution in Economic Theory",The Journal of Economic Surveys, Vol.XXV, no.3,401-430, 2011.
International Awards, Fellowships, Memberships & Prizes[7]
- Elected as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia, 2011/12.
- Elected Member, Turing Centenary Advisory Committee (TCAC), December, 2010[8]
- Elected to give the Herbert Simon Lectures at the National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, March, 2010.
- Elected to give the Krishna Bharadwaj Lecture, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, March, 2010.
- Elected Foreign Member, Moral Sciences Division of the Juridical, Political and Economic Sciences, Istituto Lombardo, Italy, July, 2010.
- Awarded the ‘2009 Nord-Sud Fondazione Pescarabbruzzo Prize’[9] for the Social Sciences, Fondazione Pescarabbruzzo, Pescara, Italy, October, 2009.
- Elected Foreign Corresponding Member of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy, 17 April, 2006.
- Elected to give the Laudatio Lecture in Honour of Richard Day, Max Planck Institute, Jena, May, 2008.
- Honorary Professor, Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, UK, 1998-2003.
- Standing Senior Visiting Professor, Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India,1998 --.
- Distinguished Invited Lecturer, Central Bank of Uruguay, Montevideo, Uruguay,1998.
- Elected to give the Arne Ryde Lectures, University of Lund, Sweden, 1994.
- US National Science Foundation/Ford Foundation Visiting Professorship at the People’s University, Beijing, China, 1988.
- C.O.R.E, Research Fellowship, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, 1977/78.
Distinguished Students
- Stefano Zambelli
- Shu-Heng Chen
- Francesco Luna
- Serena Sordi
- Stephen Kinsella
References
| Persondata |
| Name |
Velupillai, Vela |
| Alternative names |
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| Short description |
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| Date of birth |
September 25, 1947 |
| Place of birth |
Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Date of death |
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| Place of death |
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