Lance J. Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1940-05-25)May 25, 1940 Montpelier, Idaho, US |
| Died | (2022-08-15)August 15, 2022 Washington, Maine, US |
| Academic background | |
| Doctoral advisor | Hollis B. Chenery Simon Kuznets |
| Academic work | |
| Doctoral students | William Easterly[1] |
Lance Jerome Taylor (May 25, 1940 to August 15, 2022) was an American economist who was known for his contributions tostructuralist macroeconomics.[2] He was the Arnhold Professor of International Cooperation and Development and director of theCenter for Economic Policy Analysis at theNew School for Social Research.
As a professor, he taught students who come in with "a critical attitude about economics," aiming to encourage that "progressive perspective" while providing them "the standard technical tools of economics."[3] According to Taylor, structuralist economics sought to understand the macroeconomy through “its major institutions and distributive relationships across productive sectors and social groups."[4]
He was a visiting scholar or policy advisor in over 25 countries, including Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Russia, Egypt, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Pakistan, India, and Thailand.[5]
He taught and worked at theNew School for Social Research since 1993.[6][7] Taylor was previously associate professor of economics at Harvard and Professor of Economics at MIT, year-long visiting professorships at U. Minnesota, Univesidade de Brasilia, Delhi School of Economics, and Stockholm School of Economics. He received a B.S. degree with honors in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1962 and, after study at Lund University (Sweden) and a Fulbright Fellowship in mathematics and economics, he received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1968.[8][9]
Taylor published extensively in the fields of macroeconomics and development economics, focusing on the interaction of growth, stability and income distribution under different social relations.[10] He contributed to the development of modern Computable General Equilibrium models.[11] Using social accounting matrices of national economies, he worked to identify conditions that support healthy economics as opposed to those that yield economic crises, concluding in part that the conditions of each are complex and the particular sets of outcomes are often unanticipated. In the case of the recent economic crises, Taylor highlighted the conditions of financial deregulation and worsening income inequality.[12]
More recently Taylor took up environmental macroeconomics, under standard and demand-driven growth models. In this work, he analyzed the short- and long-term social cost of greenhouse gasses and climate change, emission control legislation, and the role of green enterprise in economic recovery and sustainability, GDP and employment growth, and service-based economies.[13][14]
Taylor and his wife,Yvonne Signe Margareta Johnsson Taylor, owned the Black Locust Farm in Washington, Maine.[23] They had two childrenIan Lance Taylor andSigne Marguerite Taylor, and three grandchildrenLyla Yvonne Taylor Stettenheim,Taylor Imogen Ross, andSoren Taylor Stettenheim.[24]
