Kazimierz Łaski facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kazimierz Łaski
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Kazimierz Łaski, December 1990
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Kazimierz Łaski
December 15, 1921 Częstochowa, Poland
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| Died | October 20, 2015 (aged 93) |
| Nationality | Poland - Austria |
| Institution | The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) |
| School or tradition |
Post-Keynesian economics |
Kazimierz Łaski (December 15, 1921 – October 20, 2015) was a Polish-Austrian economist. During the antisemitic purge of 1968 Łaski had to leave Poland and moved to Austria, where he worked for the rest of his life and was widely recognized as a major contributor to Post-Keynesian economics.
Life and career
Kazimierz Łaski was born as Hendel Cygler in Częstochowa, Poland. As a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland, in 1943 he obtained identity documents with a Polish name that he later kept.
During World War II, Łaski was a member of Gwardia Ludowa, a Polish communist partizan formation, and a participant of the underground resistance. He was wounded during the Warsaw Uprising. This involvement led him to the Polish People's Army and then to the Stalinist Ministry of Public Security. As an officer of high abilities, he was soon designated for an academic career.
Łaski studied political economy at the Academy of Political Sciences (Akademia Nauk Politycznych) from 1945, obtaining a master's degree (magisterium) in 1948, and at the University for Planning and Statistics (Szkoła Główna Planowania i Statystyki – SGPiS) in Warsaw. He did his doctoral studies at the Institute for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (Instytut Nauk Społecznych przy KC PZPR – INS), earning his doctorate in 1954 with a dissertation on Accumulation and consumption during the industrialization of the Polish People's Republic. Łaski started work at the SGPiS in 1949 as assistant to Professor Włodzimierz Brus.
In 1955 he became assistant professor and in 1960 associate professor at the Chair of Political Economy of the Faculty for Foreign Trade at the SGPiS. In this capacity he supervised research and teaching and invited Michał Kalecki, one of the most prominent Polish economists, to give courses at the SGPiS. At the same time, Łaski lectured at the INS and, after its closure, at the University for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Społecznych przy KC PZPR – WSNS). In 1957–60, Łaski was deputy-dean and then dean of the Faculty of Economics of Production, and in 1961–63 deputy chancellor of the SGPiS in charge of teaching and research. In 1961–66, he served as a member of the executive committee of the Higher Education Council at the Ministry of Higher Education. He was one of the founders of the Higher Course in Planning for Economists from Developing Countries, chaired its scientific council and thereafter was deputy head of the course in 1963–68. In 1965–68, Łaski was president of the Warsaw Chapter of the Polish Economic Society.
In 1960, Łaski held a Ford scholarship at the Institut de sciences économiques appliquées (with Professor François Perroux) in Paris. In 1964, he was visiting professor at the Institute for Higher Studies and Scientific Research (IHS) in Vienna, and during the academic year 1966–67 Directeur d'études à titre étrangère at the Ecole pratique des hautes études, Sorbonne in Paris.
The "golden age" of the Polish school of economics was interrupted by the Polish political crisis of 1968. In the course of the antisemitic and anti-intellectual campaign (about 15,000 Polish citizens of Jewish origin were pressured to emigrate from the Polish People's Republic), students and colleagues of Michał Kalecki were subject to harsh, politically motivated attacks. In November 1968, Łaski emigrated from Poland and settled in Austria. He initially (1969–71) worked as a research fellow at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) in the Department for International Comparative Economics, and as visiting professor at the Université catholique de Louvain in 1970. Łaski's work at the WIFO entailed an intensive collaboration and exchange i.a. with the Austrian economists Kurt W. Rothschild and Josef Steindl and the Czech-Austrian economist Friedrich Levcik. In 1971, Łaski was appointed full professor at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz and started work as research associate at The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw)). In 1990 Łaski also served as an official advisor to the acting Polish minister Jerzy Osiatyński, head of the Central Planning Office. In 1991, Łaski retired from the Johannes Kepler University as professor emeritus and until 1996 was research director at the wiiw. In 1994–95 Łaski was also a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. From 1996, Kazimierz Łaski worked as research associate at the wiiw.
Death
Kazimierz Łaski died on October 20, 2015. He was 93 years old at the time of his death. He died in Vienna, Austria, where he had worked for the rest of his life
