Nobel-winning economist and Canadian researcher share UN labour prize

The United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) has selected Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and leading Canadian labour researcher Harry Arthurs as the winners of its Decent Work Research Prize 2008.

Professor Stiglitz was chosen for his “extraordinary lifetime contribution to knowledge on the central concerns of the ILO and its constituents reflecting advances in understanding of different dimensions of decent work,” the agency said in a news release.

He is Chair of Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and a member of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization convened by the ILO.

Being selected for the Decent Work Research Prize was “a fantastic honour,” said Professor Stiglitz, the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics.

Professor Arthurs, former Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, Canada, and former President of the University, was cited for a major specific contribution to the understanding of socio-economic relationships and policy instruments for the advancement of decent work.

He is also the author of a 2006 report submitted to the Canadian Government on “Fairness at Work. Federal Labour Standards for the 21st Century.”

Professor Arthurs, one Canada’s leading labour law academics, said that “for a labour law scholar, this is truly the most coveted prize.”

The two winners, chosen by a jury of eminent international experts on labour and social policy issues, will share the $10,000 award.

The first two recipients of the Prize in 2007 were former South African President and Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela and Professor Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Professor Emeritus of Economics and Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, United States.