For more than two decades, the Galbraith Award and lecture have been a major feature of the summer meetings of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association, or AAEA. At this event, a leading scholar, usually an economist, delivers a lecture presenting new ideas and methods and exploring their relevance to agricultural economists.
The annual T.W. Schultz Memorial Lecture serves a similar purpose at the winter Allied Social Science Associations meetings. Introduced in 2006, the Schultz event followed the Galbraith model. Both events aim to build a bridge between agricultural economists and the wider economics community.
How the idea began
As I recall, the idea emerged during a meeting of the AAEA Foundation, now the AAEA Trust, in 2003. Members of the Foundation’s board were considering how the AAEA might celebrate its approaching centennial. We wanted to recognize agricultural economists whose contributions had changed economics and public life. Two obvious names were Theodore Schultz, the Nobel laureate, and John Kenneth Galbraith, who had become one of the world’s most recognizable economists and public intellectuals.
During the discussion, I suggested that a commemorative award could also bring major thinkers from economics and other disciplines to our meetings. They could inspire our members, challenge our assumptions, and introduce us to new questions. At the same time, these visitors would become more familiar with our association and the contributions of agricultural economists.
The foundation board appointed members of the Galbraith Initiative Committee, with me as chair. Turning the idea into an ongoing event took considerable effort. One memorable step was writing to Professor Galbraith to ask permission to establish an award in his name. His response was enthusiastic:
“This letter is to tell of my pleasure and, of course, full acceptance of the award and honor.”
You can see the history of the award in the attached brochure from the first Galbraith Commemorative Project. The first event was held in Montreal in 2003. John Kenneth Galbraith could not attend the meeting, but his son, James Galbraith, a professor at the University of Texas, joined us. Leaders from two institutions central to Galbraith’s career—Gordon Rausser, who was a dean at Berkeley, and Derek Bok, president of Harvard at the time—spoke about Galbraith’s career and contributions. We aimed to attract outstanding speakers. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz received the award in 2004, followed by Michael Porter, the most cited business scholar, in 2005 and Kenneth Arrow in 2006. Stiglitz and Arrow won the Nobel before they received the Galbraith Award, but we have been successful judges of talent: six other speakers received the Nobel Prize after delivering their Galbraith lectures.
Why Galbraith
Learning more about Galbraith strengthened my appreciation of the choice. He began in agricultural economics but went on to address some of the largest questions facing modern societies: Who holds economic power? How are consumer preferences formed? Why can a wealthy society neglect its public institutions?
Born in Canada, Galbraith earned his doctorate in agricultural economics at Berkeley in 1934. He began teaching at Harvard that year and later became a professor of economics there. During World War II, he held senior positions in the Office of Price Administration, overseeing price controls at a time when inflation management was central to the war effort. He also served as President John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963. Harvard’s chronology of Galbraith’s life
I met him once. He was an exceptionally tall man (6 feet 9 inches) who avoided playing basketball, but his intellectual presence was even more striking. His career showed how someone trained in agricultural economics could become an influential participant in national policy and international affairs.
Galbraith was an institutional economist: he wanted to understand the organizations and power relationships through which economies actually operate. Rather than assuming that competition among many small firms explained modern capitalism, he examined large corporations, organized labor, and government. He brought these questions to a broad audience through accessible, often witty prose. Harvard’s memorial tribute
Galbraith’s books supplied both arguments and a vocabulary that continue to shape economic discussion. He introduced the notion of countervailing power in his book American Capitalism (1952). Large businesses were not necessarily restrained by small competitors. Their power could instead be checked by other organized groups, including unions and large buyers, with government helping to sustain those checks.
In The Affluent Society (1958), he challenged the conventional wisdom that expanding private production should remain society’s overriding goal. He asked why increasing private wealth could coexist with neglected schools, inadequate infrastructure, and poor public services. He also emphasized that consumer wants are not independent of producers: advertising and salesmanship can help create the desires that production then satisfies.
In The New Industrial State (1967), he described the technostructure—the managers, engineers, and other specialists who collectively guide large corporations. Their decisions, he argued, reflected organizational planning and the pursuit of stability as much as the choices of individual entrepreneurs responding to market prices.
One need not agree with every argument to appreciate the questions he raised. Galbraith made power, public investment, and the balance between private consumption and public needs central to discussions of economic performance.
What the award represents
The purpose of the Galbraith Award was never to require agreement with Galbraith. It was to honor his example of intellectual ambition and public engagement while bringing new perspectives into our meetings.
Agricultural economics begins with practical problems, but those problems lead naturally to broader questions about markets, institutions, technology, poverty, and the environment. Galbraith’s career demonstrated how far that foundation could take a scholar.
Looking back, I am pleased that an idea discussed among colleagues became an enduring part of our association’s intellectual life. The award gives our members access to important thinkers and gives those thinkers an opportunity to engage with our field. That continuing exchange is the contribution I hoped we would make.