As the results of a poll for “World Thinkers 2014” by Prospect, a British magazine, came in, MAO Yushi, Chinese leading economist, Honorary President of Unirule Institute of Economics, and President of Humanism Economics Society, was voted the top ten thinkers of the world in 2014. Among the top ten winners, MAO Yushi ranked fourth, followed by Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science winners Amartya Sen and Daniel Kahneman. According to Prospect, massive votes came from Twitter and Facebook accounts all over the world. Prospect admitted that this poll was merely a scientific way to assess one’s contribution and no simple judgment should be drawn from the data of votes considering the apparent influence of India media’s interest in the poll itself. However, the top 5 thinkers out of the top ten winners, namely, Amartya Sen, Raghuram Rajan, Arundhati Roy, MAO Yushi, and Kaushik Basu, made significant contribution to the world as their work focused on the challenges of the world economy in various facets. For example, whether it is totalitarian politics and rapid economic growth with Chinese characteristics, or India’s attempt to share the newly gained wealth, such questions are closely linked to the livelihood of those in the developed countries and the growing pains of those in the developing world. The financial crisis and its complications in the once-called “first world” are the topic of two winners: Pope Francis, who maintains a skeptic attitude towards capitalism, and Ha-Joon Chang, an economist from Cambridge University who attempts to restore the old traditions of political economy by criticizing his peers’ delusion for abstract mathematical models. 85-year-old economist MAO Yushi, who ranked fourth in the list, is “one of China’s leading economists and an outspoken advocate of wide-ranging policy reform.” He is also, according to Prospect, “highly critical of the neo-Maoist left.” He is the author of 18 non-fiction books, including bestselling Economics in Everyday Life, which aims to explain to the public the principles and functions of a market economy. The global impact of his work was recognised when he was awarded the Cato Institute’s 2012 Milton Friedman Prize. MAO Yushi is also the President of a non-governmental organization Humanism Economics Society. The top 10 world thinkers 2014 include: Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner in 1998; Raghuram Rajan, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India; Arundhati Roy, female Indian writer; MAO Yushi, Chinese economist; Pope Francis, the 266th head of the Roman Catholic Church; Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank; Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge; Peter Higgs, 2013 Nobel Prize winner in physics; Ha-Joon Chang, a South Korean economist; and Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economics. Prospect is a monthly British general interest magazine, specialising in politics, economics and current affairs. It has gained general attention since its creation in 1995. Since 2005, it has been managing polls for top 100 figures in various areas in order to promote ideas and conceptions in various countries and areas of studies. 2014 World Thinkers covers experts in various areas, such as physics, psychology, economics, and philosophy. See original article by Prospect: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/world-thinkers-2014-the-results/#.U1xeB4CPUwS |
