Jan Švejnar awarded Silver Medal of the President of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic

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Jan Švejnar has received the Silver Medal of the President of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic for his work in advancing economic welfare and prosperity in his native country. 

“It's a great honor,” said Švejnar, who is the Richard N. Gardner Professor of Economics and International Affairs at SIPA. “It's an award that is given to relatively few people, and it's people from different walks of life who show courage, who show compassion, who show perseverance, and in my case, are trying to improve welfare and economic performance.” Švejnar received the award on September 28, the Czech Republic’s statehood day. 

Švejnar has helped shape his home country’s post-communist economic trajectory, both by training future economists and by directly advising the government. “I started an American-style PhD program in economics at Charles University [in Prague] and an economics institute at the Academy of Sciences at the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute” while still working as a professor here in the US. “Other people like [SIPA Professor] Joe Stiglitz became part of it [...] and we started influencing discourse on policy.” 

That led to a longtime friendship with Václav Havel, the writer and first president of the Czech Republic after the fall of communism. “I think we had a terrific relationship,” said Švejnar, who served as Havel’s informal economic advisor. “He even persuaded me to run for president in the Czech Republic in 2008. We have his bust in the library here in SIPA because he spent a semester at Columbia.” 

Švejnar was awarded the Neuron Prize for lifetime achievement from the Karel Janeček Endowment for Research and Science, the Czech Republic’s highest honor for achievements in science, medicine, and economics, in 2012. In 2015, he was honored with the 2015 IZA Prize in Labor Economics from the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, where he is also a fellow. 

Švejnar is continuing his influential comparative economics research at SIPA, teaching in the leadership program and the program for economic policy management, and studying the differences between the US economy and other developed economies and the role of the ultrawealthy in their domestic economic contexts. 

“This is an amazing achievement and well-deserved honor for one of our most celebrated faculty members,” said Columbia SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo. “Jan’s pioneering work to advance economic welfare, both as a scholar of economics and as a policy adviser to the president, was instrumental in integrating the Czech Republic with the rest of Europe during the turbulent aftermath of the fall of communism.”

Švejnar received his BS from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and both his PhD and MA in economics from Princeton University. He is a fellow of the European Economic Association and the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. He was previously the Everett E. Berg Professor of Business Administration and director of the William Davidson Institute at the Ross School of Business, professor of economics, and director of the International Policy Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He has also taught at both Cornell and the University of Pittsburgh.