Brief Resume
Currently, Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Taught at JNU from 1973 and retired as the RBI Professor of Economic Theory at the CESP in 2010. In between, while on leave from JNU, I also taught at LSE, Cornell University, and the University of Tsukuba in Japan. After retirement from JNU, held the position of Country Director of the International Growth Centre (IGC) programme in Bihar from 2010 its inception, to March 31, 2017; research has been recognized by Fellowships at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University during 2002-3 and post-retirement from JNU, was the Jawaharlal Nehru National Fellow of the ICSSR, 2011-13. During 2011-17, was also Honorary Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi. In 2013, I was recognised as Professor Emeritus at JNU. Areas of interest and research are primarily in Economic Theory, with published papers in the fields of Economic Dynamics, General Equilibrium Analysis, Development Economics, Governance, and related topics.
A MORE DETAILED ACCOUNT
Anjan Mukherji is an Indian economic theorist associated with work on general equilibrium theory, disequilibrium adjustment, economic dynamics, welfare economics, and institutional systems. He was a member of the founding faculty of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where he later served as Reserve Bank of India Professor of Economic Theory; he retired in July 2010 and was subsequently appointed Professor Emeritus in 2013.
Mukherji’s research has focused on stability of equilibrium, tâtonnement and non-tatonnement dynamics, growth theory, and economic systems. His work has appeared in journals including *Econometrica*, *Journal of Economic Theory*, *Review of Economic Studies*, *International Economic Review*, and *International Journal of Economic Theory* and in edited collections with major scholars as editors, e.g., Paul Samuelson ( see Mukherji (1973 A). He is the author of *Walrasian and Non-Walrasian Equilibria: An Introduction to General Equilibrium Analysis* (Clarendon Press, 1990); an enlarged version appeared in 2002 as “An Introduction to General Equilibrium Analysis, Walrasian and Non-Walrasian Equilibria” and co-author of *Mathematical Methods and Economic Theory* (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Early life and education
Mukherji studied at St. Xavier’s High School, Patna from 1951 to 1960; after a temporary stay at St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata during the first half of 1961, he joined the B.A. Mathematics honours programme at Presidency College during 1961-64 and completed his M.A. in Pure Mathematics from the University College of Science of Calcutta University in 1966. Subsequently, he joined the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta as a Research Assistant to the Economics Group during 1967-69. For his doctoral studies, he joined the University of Rochester in New York, U.S.A in 1969 on receiving a scholarship and completed his Ph.D. in Economics in 1973.
Academic career
Mukherji joined the founding faculty of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 1973. The founding faculty included, apart from Mukherji, Krishna Bharadwaj, Amit Bhaduri, Utsa Patnaik, Sunanda Sen, and Prabhat Patnaik.
At JNU, Mukherji taught economic theory, general equilibrium analysis, welfare economics, and economic dynamics. He later held the position of Reserve Bank of India Professor of Economic Theory and, after retirement from active teaching in 2010, was appointed Professor Emeritus in 2013.
He has also held visiting or teaching positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1977-78), Cornell University (1982-83), the University of Tsukuba (1989-90, 1998-1999), and Osaka University (2002-3).
Research
Mukherji’s early work examined stability and adjustment processes in competitive economies. His publications addressed complementarity, local stability, barter processes, growth dynamics, and the mathematical foundations of equilibrium systems.
More specifically, his recent papers on stability of competitive equilibrium, mention may be made of the following: his JET (2007) paper, which showed how strong results may be obtained in smaller dimensional models by providing a General Law of Demand; in addition, this result showed why the well-known Scarf (1960) example of instability was a special case and a slight change in the endowment leads to global stability; his (1995) Econometrica paper, “ A Locally Stable Adjustment Process” looked at a process which was related to the Global Newton Process analysed by Smale. But did not require the ad-hoc boundary condition employed in the analysis of the Global Newton Method, whose only support was untenable. This paper was to prove crucial for Mukherji’s later investigations into conditions for the uniqueness of competitive equilibrium which appeared in Economic Theory in 1997 and was later reprinted in 2000, in a 3 Volume collection edited by Walker titled “Equilibrium”, Edger Alger. (Volume II “Equilibria in Traditional Models”.) His 2012 paper in the International Journal of Economic Theory, titled “The Second Fundamental Theorem of Positive Economics”, shows how the Gale (1960) example leads to stability by changing the endowment structure, without changing the equilibrium price and further that this result may be seen to be true in more general cases, hence qualifying to be termed as a fundamental theorem.
His earlier research involved the investigation of whether the choice of the numeraire affected stability results and showed that it does (RES 1973); what kind of conditions were necessary for stability to obtain, probably the only one in the literature (unpublished for long, till McKenzie (2005, “ Classical General Equilibrium Theory”, MIT Press) reported it.). And the investigation of minimal conditions required for choice to be well defined (Econometrica 1977) and in the same contribution, provided a demonstration of how even with such general properties of preferences, an existence of competitive equilibrium could be ensured. Rationality which is often thought to be necessary for such exercises, could be dispensed with. Together with the necessary conditions for stability, results of the 2012 paper imply that the competitive equilibrium has a structure; the “Anything Goes” opinion about the nature of the competitive equilibrium is not quite warranted given the generally misunderstood reactions to the Sonnenschein-Debreu – Mantel results. These matters were discussed in Mukherji (2019 A).
Regarding his contribution to the areas of Non-Walrasian Equilibria, he considered non-tatonnement processes and obtained very general results, Mukherji (1974) and (1990); the latter was an effort to explain how the participants engage in transactions to find out whether they can make their desired trades and if they cannot then then they either bid the price up or down depending on whether they were unable to buy or sell, and so the process unfolds, a string of Non-Walrasian equilibria converging to a Walrasian one.
Among the other lines of research taken up by Mukherji, the area of growth dynamics and the matter of market failures may be mentioned. The Goodwin model of growth has a great attraction in demonstrating that the success of capitalism leads to its own downfall and then it leads to a rise in the forces of capitalism once again only to dissipate once again. Thus, a cyclical movement was depicted. In, (2005 A), Mukherji established that the model was special and a slight weakening of the formulations allowed for cyclical movements to collapse; also since the variables in the Goodwin exercise were ‘shares’, they had to be kept less than 1 to make sense, but there was no such guarantee; in a paper Mukherji and Dutta ( 2010 ), showed what kind of modification needed to be made. These led to the investigation of the Lotka-Volterra equations and the most general form was analysed in Mukherji (2005 B) which among other things, singled out, the conditions for cyclical phenomenon to be exhibited.
Non-linear processes are known to produce rather unpredictable behaviour; in two studies, Mukherji (1999) and (2005) showed how this complex behaviour could be exhibited in some standard models; one of them in the context of a price adjustment model and the other in the context of a discrete growth process fuelled by innovation of a particular type.
The First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics is the basis for the belief that policy prescriptions impose competition as a requirement. It is known that under some conditions like the presence of externalities or quality uncertainty, such markets may not exhibit this desirable property. Corrections have to be in place. Mukherji (2014, 2015 and 2018) showed that there is another category of problems which people may be aware of but no clearcut result was known to be in place, viz., that in a competitive equilibrium, there would be people who would find it preferable to deviate from their competitive trades. Hence clearly one needs safeguards that contractual obligations are fulfilled, i.e., one of the foundations of competitive equilibrium has to be that people agree to behave competitively. This raises important considerations regarding the policies which have to be followed.
Mukherji’s book *Walrasian and Non-Walrasian Equilibria* examined themes in equilibrium theory and disequilibrium analysis. His later writings also explored questions of market failure, governance, agricultural transformation, and institutional coordination. The other book on Mathematical Methods and Economic Theory provides a basic approach to mathematical methods: the book discuuses problems in economic theory and then develops the necessary tools.
In later years, he has been associated with work on governance, development, and institutional coordination through affiliations with the International Growth Centre (IGC), the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). During this period Mukherji and Mukherji (2012) (NIPFP WP) completed a study on Bihar’s Development and tried to pin point factors responsible as well as the factors which held out hope at that point in time. A smaller version was published as (Mukherji and Mukherji (2015).
To wind up, Mukherji contributed to the literature on micro-foundations of macroeconomics, and his papers along with Sanyal (Mukherji and Sanyal (1986,1988 )) have been used in the books Mukherji (1990) and (2002) to undertake exercises in the context of the three good models made famous by Malinvaud and hence consider Non-Walrasian equilibria and their properties. A couple of lectures need to be mentioned since their published versions have been in some demand: Mukherji( 2006, 2019 B) discusses the determination of wages under various market structures and the latter, considers some noteworthy features of Marxian economics.
Honors and recognition
Mukherji received the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize in Social Science Research (Economics) in 1988 from the Institute for Social and Economic Change under the aegis of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). As primarily, a general equilibrium theorist, he considers his invited participation in the 50th anniversary of the Hicks classic “Value and Capital” conference, organised by the International Economic Association in 1988, held at Bolognia, as his greatest recognition. Mukherji (1991) contains the text of his contribution to the conference, a discussion of the paper by Frank Hahn.
He was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru National Fellowship by the ICSSR after his retirement from JNU.
A festschrift volume on themes related to equilibrium, growth, and inequality, titled “Essays for Anjan Mukherji” was later published by Oxford University Press (2011) edited by Mukherji’s doctoral students ( Dastidar, Mukhopadhyay and Sinha ; the reviews of this book (Sanyal (2012) in Economic and Political Weekly and (Ghate, 2017 in the Book Review) attest to the quality of the contributions and the blurb of the book contains laudatory comments by internationally acclaimed scholars, re Mukherji’s influence. The foreword to this collection is by Lionel McKenzie, possibly the last piece that he wrote, is a noteworthy feature of this collection.
Influence
Mukherji taught at JNU for several decades and was associated with the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning during its formative years.
His work has been cited in later research on equilibrium dynamics, instability, experimental economics, and nonlinear systems.
Many students have referred to Mukherji’s influence on their careers; a notable among them is the Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee when he acknowledged this in his Nobel autobiography. His students not only occupy chairs in important Universities or Institutions all over the world but also among corporate bodies.
Selected works mentioned above
Books
* *Walrasian and Non-Walrasian Equilibria: An Introduction to General Equilibrium Analysis* (Clarendon Press, 1990); an enlarged version appeared as “An Introduction to General Equilibrium Analysis: Walrasian and Non-Walrasian Equilibria”, Oxford University Press, Delhi (2002).
* *Mathematical Methods and Economic Theory* (Oxford University Press, 2010) with Subrata Guha.
* *Perspectives on Efficiency, Growth and Inequality* (co-edited with Satish K. Jain, Routledge, 2015)
Papers
“On Sensitivity of Stability Results to the Choice of the Numeraire”, Review of Economic Studies, XL(3), pp. 427-433, 1973.
“Stability in an Economy with Production”, in Trade Stability and Macro-Economics , edited by G. Horwich and P.A. Samuelson, Academic Press, pp 243-258, 1973 A.
“The Edgeworth-Uzawa Barter Stabilizes Prices”, International Economic Review, 15, 1, pp. 236-241,1974.
“The Existence of Choice Functions”, Econometrica 45,4, pp. 889-894,1977.
“Price Flexibility and Unemployment : The Microeconomics of Some Old Fashioned Ques�ons”, Keio Economic Studies, XXIII, 2, pp. 19-35, 1986 (with Amal Sanyal)
“Uncertainty, Liquidity and the Demand for Money”, Keio Economic Studies, XXV, 1, pp 1-19, 1988. (with Amal Sanyal)
“`A Non-tatonnement Process”, in Economic Theory and Policy: Essays in honour of Professor D. Banerjee, ed. by Debraj Ray et. al., Oxford University Press, Delhi, pp. 79-90, 1990.
“Comment on Stability”, in Value and Capital: Fifty Years later, ed. by L. W. McKenzie and S. Zamagni, Macmillan, London , pp. 85-89,1991.
“A Locally Stable Adjustment Process”, Econometrica , 63, 2, pp 441-448, 1995.
“On the Uniqueness of Competitive Equilibrium”, Economic Theory, 10, pp. 509-520, 1997.
(reprinted in Equilibrium, Volume II, Equilibrium in Traditional Models}, Donald A. Walker, ed., Edward Elgar, 2000.
“A Simple Example of Complex Dynamics”, Economic Theory, 14, 3, pp 741-749, 1999.
“The Robustness of Closed Orbits in a Class of Dynamic Economic Models”, in Economic Theory for a Changing World, Policy Modelling for Growth, ed. By Sajal Lahiri and Pradeep Mai�, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2005 A.
“The Possibility of Cyclical Behavior in a Class of Dynamic Models”, American Journal of Applied Sciences, Special Issue, 2005 B, 27-38.
“Robust Cyclical Growth”, International Journal of Economic Theory, 1, 3, 2005 C, 233- 246.
“On Wages and Employment”, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 49, 2006, 63-77.
“A Global Stability Condition: Generalized Law of Demand”, Journal of Economic Theory, 134, 2007, 583-92.
“Goodwin’s Growth Cycles: A Reconsideration”, in Econophysics & Economics of Games, Social Choices and Quantitative Techniques, ed. B. Basu, B.K. Chakrabarti, S. R. Chakravarty and K. Gangopadhyay, Springer, New Economic Windows Series (2010). (with Soumya Data}
“The Second Fundamental Theorem of Positive Economics”, International Journal of Economic Theory}, 8, 125-138 2012.
“Is Competitive Behaviour a Best Response?” In Emerging Issues in Economic Development: A Contemporary Theoretical Perspective}, Edited by S. Marjit and M. Rajeev, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2014
“Market Failures: Almost Always?” In Contributions to Economic Theory, Essays in Honour of Satish Jain,} Edited by S. Subramanian, Subrata Guha and Rajendra Kundu, Routledge, Delhi, 2015.
“Bihar: What went wrong? And What Changed?” In The Making of Miracles in Indian States, Edited by Arvind Pangariya and M. Govinda Rao, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015 (with Arnab Mukherji)
“Money and Market Failure: A Theoretical Perspective”, In Economic Theory and Policy Amidst Global Discontent, Edited by A. Ghosh Dastidar, R. Malhotra and V. Suneja, Routledge, New York, 2018. And South Asia Edition, 2018
“General Equilibrium: A Status Report”, In Pluralistic Economics and its History, eds., A. Sinha and M. Thomas, Routledge South Asia Edition 2019 A,191-209.
Marxian Economics: Notes from a Neo-classical Viewpoint, Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice, 2019 B, 18(1), 1-16.
