University of Chicago awards honoris causa doctorate to Barcelona GSE founder Andreu Mas-Colell
The founder of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics will receive the honorary doctorate at the university's graduation ceremony in Chicago next month.
Andreu Mas-Colell at the first reunion of Barcelona GSE alumni (2013)
Barcelona GSE founder Andreu Mas-Colell will be one of four distinguished scholars honored with the distinction of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Chicago at the institution's 523rd Convocation on June 13, 2015.
Presenting the award to Prof. Mas-Colell will be Hugo Sonnenschein, President Emeritus of the University of Chicago and Chairman of the Barcelona GSE Scientific Council, an external group of leading international academics who provide strategic guidance for the School's academic programs and research initiatives.
Professor Mas-Colell is on leave from his position as Professor of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Affiliated Professor of the Barcelona GSE. He is currently serving as Minister of Economy and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia. The other honoris causa recipients this year are all top scholars working at institutions in the United States: glaciologist Richard B. Alley (Pennsylvania State University), cancer researcher Titia de Lange (Rockefeller University), and mathematician Peter Sarnak (Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton).
About Andreu Mas-Colell
Andreu Mas-Colell (PhD, University of Minnesota, 1974) is the founder of the Barcelona GSE and served as its Chairman until December 2010, when he became Minister for Economy and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia. He is Professor of Economics at UPF and Barcelona GSE (on leave), and he was previously Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1981-96) and of Economics and Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley (1972-80).
He has been a Sloan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow and also holds previous honoris causa doctorates from the Universities of Alacant, Toulouse and HEC (Paris), in addition to being awarded the Premio Rey Juan Carlos in economics and the Pascual Madoz Spanish Research Prize.
Andreu Mas-Colell served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Mathematical Economics and of Econometrica (1985-92), and is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society, which he presided over in 1993. He is a Foreign Associate to the US National Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. From 1999 to 2005 he was a member of the executive committee of the International Economic Association. In 2006 he was president of the European Economic Association. He has also been minister for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia (2000-2003) and president of the Advisory Scientific Committee of Telefónica Research and Development.
He has written over 100 research papers and is the author of The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium: A Differentiable Approach (Cambridge University Press, 1985) and co-author with M. Whinston and J. Green, and of the graduate textbook Microeconomic Theory (Oxford University Press, 1995).