James Tobin to Receive Bar Association Award

James L. Tobin, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Yale University’s Sterling Professor Emeritus of Economics, will receive the Distinguished Public Service Award from the Connecticut Bar Association – CBA – on June 16.

Professor Tobin served on the Yale faculty from 1950 until his retirement in 1988. He was director of the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale from the time of its establishment in 1955 until 1961, when he took a one-year leave from the University to serve as a member of President Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisors in Washington, D.C. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972. In 1981, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science.

Author or editor of 13 books and more than 400 articles, Professor Tobin’s main professional interests are macroeconomics, monetary theory and policy, fiscal policy and public finance, consumption and saving, unemployment and inflation, portfolio theory and asset markets, and econometrics. He is a leading advocate of Keynesian economics, a theory first espoused by John M. Keynes, who recommended the use of government monetary and fiscal programs to increase employment and spending.

Professor Tobin has held many positions in professional associations. He has been president of the Econometrics Society, the American Economic Association and the Eastern Economics Association.

The CBA’s Distinguished Public Service Award is presented to a Connecticut resident who has made significant contributions to society. The CBA is a private, not-for-profit association of lawyers and judges dedicated to promoting public service and advancing the principles of law and justice through its more than 11,000 members.