American wins Spanish economics prize

23 June 2004

OVIEDO – American economist Paul Krugman was chosen as this year’s winner of the Prince of Asturias Prize for Social Sciences Wednesday.

Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton University, beat by a few votes philosophers Tzvetan Todorov and Rudiger Safranks and Peruvian historian Guillermo Lohmann Villena.

He was the third Prince of Asturias winner announced this year, after Italian Claudio Magris and a group of five cancer researchers won the prizes for Literature and Science and Technology, respectively.

Krugman was cited as “one of the most outstanding economists of our times,” said the Prince of Asturias Foundation, which set up the prize series in 1981 to honour outstanding scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work.

Krugman was praised “for his significant contributions to our knowledge of the economics of international trade and for his ability to convey economic theories to a wider public.”

The Foundation also lauded Krugman for “combining the precision of his academic approach with brilliant explanatory power and communicative ability.”

Krugman writes opinion pieces for newspapers.

Exactly 24 candidates from 12 countries were competing for the award, among them former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Spanish physician Maria Segovia de Arana, the International Criminal Court and the Colombian Anthropology and History Institute.

The jury, headed by the president of the Galician regional government, Manuel Fraga, comprised corporate presidents and chiefs of financial and educational institutions.

Spanish Crown Prince Felipe de Borbon, after whom the awards are named, will hand them out at a ceremony at Oviedo’s Campoamor Theatre later this year.

All of the Prince of Asturias awards carry cash grants of  EUR 50,000 (USD 65,000).

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news