Short presentation of the Nobel laureate

Gunnar Myrdal, one of the most outstanding Scandinavian thinkers of the 20th century and the laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1974, was a great advocate of organized international aid for the poorest countries. This was supposed to be a part of a bigger plan – to have governments introduce an ‘egalitarian policy’, the final aim of which was world economic integration. Myrdal presented the concept of egalitarian policy for the first time in the work An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem in America and American Democracy (1944). However, the work, written from the angle of a sociological analysis, was confined to only the subject indicated in the title. In his later works Myrdal expanded his deliberations by referring to the world economy, and his recommendations were to provide for a more just sharing of the goods. The views of his were presented in, inter alia: An International Economy. Problems and Prospects; Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions; Beyond the Welfare State; Rich Lands and Poor: The Road to World Prosperity and in the three-volume work entitled Asian Drama. An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations.2 In the latter work, whose size was referred to by the author himself as ‘abominable’, he makes reference in the title to Adam Smith's classical work: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He outlined the credo of his scientific work in the Nobel lecture The Equality Issue in World Development (Lindbeck 1992, 193−211).

Myrdal, apart from being scientifically active, was a practitioner as well. For many years he had served Swedish social democracy as an export-politician, and in the years 1947−1957 he was the first Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. He also was also the co-founder of the Institute for International Economic Studies and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He engaged himself in the work of organisations helping economically underdeveloped regions in South-East Asia, Africa and Latin America (ibid., 193−211; Nowicki 1984, 186−187).

Inequalities and how to reduce them

The theses formulated by the Swedish economist in the 1950s dealing with the discrepancies in the level and pace of the world's development are pertinent today as well, since the problem has not disappeared, although the proportions of the wealth and poverty among countries have changed significantly.