RAGNAR NURKSE LECTURES

In 2007 Eesti Pank established the Ragnar Nurkse Memorial Lecture Series to honour the work of Professor Ragnar Nurkse. These lectures commemorate the achievements of Professor Nurkse, an Estonian-descended international economist and policy maker whose research advanced the science of economics. The lectures will be held at Eesti Pank every year.

Nurkse has been widely recognized as a leading international economist in the fields of international economics and finance and development economics in the 1940-50s. His contributions in the 1940s provided valuable knowledge and concepts of monetary issues (e.g. inflation and financial crises), international trade matters, international policy coordination and theory of development economics. His colleagues from the 1950s have stipulated that Nurkse had become "an economist of world fame" and he is a renowned scientist also nowadays. At the same time, only a few economists know that he was of Estonian origin.

Even more curiously, he has been discovered as the most well-known Estonian scientist at home, here in Estonia, only in recent years. There might be several reasons for that. First, Ragnar Nurkse's entire research career was outside Estonia. Second, the so-called Iron Curtain around Estonia was especially tight for social sciences and scientists.

Professor Ragnar Nurkse was born on October 5, 1907 in Virumaa, Estonia. He received education at the University of Tartu, but left Estonia as early as in 1928. He engaged in research outside Estonia. In 1932, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh. From 1932 to 1934 Nurkse studied at the University of Vienna. From 1934 to 1945 he served as a financial analyst in the League of Nations. After the Second World War, he opted for an academic career and started to work for the Columbia University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Princeton University. Professor Nurkse died in 1959, at the age of 52.

We truly hope that the Memorial Lecture Series dedicated to Professor Ragnar Nurkse will help to appreciate his contributions domestically as well as internationally. We also hope that this tradition will draw our attention to issues overlooked, interesting findings and novel arguments that help us better understand the challenges associated with the Estonian economy.

   The Estonian kroon 15. A lecture by Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission, dedicated to professor Nurkse at Eesti Pank's conference "The Opportunities of the European Economy in the Context of Global Competition" in Tallinn on May 23, 2007

   The tenth anniversary of the euro: a time to reflect. A public lecture delivered by Governor of the Bank of Finland Erkki Liikanen in the Independence Hall of Eesti Pank, 10 September 2008. (Presentation).