John Mathews wins Schumpeter prize 2018 for his book Global Green Shift: When CERES Meets GAIA
Seoul: It has just been announced by the International Schumpeter Society (ISS) that the co-winners of the 2018 Schumpeter Prize are Michael Best for his book How Growth Really Happens, and John Mathews for his book Global Green Shift: When CERES Meets GAIA. The prize winners were announced at the gala dinner of the Schumpeter Society held at Seoul National University, Korea, on July 1, 2018. The prize is supported by 10,000 Euro provided by the prize sponsor, Aurora World, a Korean firm whose founder and chair Noh Hee-Yoel awarded the prize at the gala dinner, along with Professor Keun Lee, President of the Schumpeter Society and Chair of the Society’s 2018 conference, and Emeritus Professor Massimo Egidi, of the LUISS Guido Carli university in Rome, chair of the prize selection panel and president-elect of the Schumpeter Society.
The Selection panel’s commendation for John Mathews and Global Green Shift reads as follows: This important book examines China’s role as the driving force behind the renewables revolution. It indicates that China’s actions are not dictated by a fear of climate change but rather by the extreme pollution caused by its three-decade long rapid growth based on fossil fuels and a national strategy to reap the ultimate cost savings of renewables to sustain its rapid growth in the future. The author provides a convincing argument that it less a moral choice than a strategic imperative that impels China to promote renewables and circular flows, and that the reconciliation between economy and ecology follows as an unintended consequence of this strategy. On a broader scale, Mathews' book offers a wide Schumpeterian picture of the great transformation that is underway in the global economy, as manufacturing activities shift to China and other Asian countries and the green energy revolution takes place as a strategic response.
The Schumpeter Prize is awarded by the International Schumpeter Society every two years, in recognition of a recent scholarly contribution related to Schumpeter’s work. It carries a cash award of 10,000 Euro, to be shared equally if there is more than one winner. The 2018 Prize topic was designated by the Selection Committee as “Innovation and sustainable development: Schumpeterian legacies from Asian and global perspectives”. The 2018 Selection Committee was chaired by Emeritus Professor Massimo Egidi, of the LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome (http://docenti.luiss.it/egidi/italian-version/cv/), and its members were Professor Carolina Castaldi, of the TUE, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/carolina-castaldi/); Professor William Lazonick, Co-Director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, MA (and winner of the Schumpeter Prize in 2012 (https://www.uml.edu/Research/CIC/People/lazonick-william.aspx); Professor Dominique Foray, holder of the Chair of Economics and Management of Innovation at the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne (https://people.epfl.ch//dominique.foray?lang=en); and Professor Dr Uwe Cantner, who holds the Chair of Economics/Microeconomics at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, and is editor of the Schumpeter Society’s journal Evolutionary Economics (http://www.microtheory.uni-jena.de/team/members/cantner/).
Previous winners of the Schumpeter Prize have been Keun Lee, for his book Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-Up (in 2014); Dengjian Lin (2016) for his book The Great Knowledge Transcendence: The Rise of Western Science and Technology Reframed; Franco Malerba, Richard Nelson, Luigi Orsenigo and Sidney Winter for their book Innovation and the Evolution of Industries: History Friendly Models; and William Lazonick (2012) for his book Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy.