Background
Wellisz, Stanislaw was born on March 28, 1925 in Warsaw, Poland. Came to the United States, 1941. Son of Leopold and Jadwiga (Landau) Wellisz.
Wellisz, Stanislaw was born on March 28, 1925 in Warsaw, Poland. Came to the United States, 1941. Son of Leopold and Jadwiga (Landau) Wellisz.
Bachelor magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1946. Master of Arts, Harvard College, 1949. Postgraduate, University Cambridge, England, 1952.
Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1953. Doctor (honorary), Warsaw University, 1998.
Instructor, Williams College, Massachusetts, 1955-1957. Assistant Professor, Association Professor, Graduate School Business, University Chicago, 1957-1960,1961^4. Ford Foundation Visiting Professor, Warsaw University, Central School Planning and Statistics, Warsaw, 1950-1960.
Chief Economics Adviser, Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Organisation, Calcutta, 1961-1963. Director, Harlem Development, Project,
8. Senior Economics Consultant, Greater Istanbul Master Plan Bureau, 1975-1976.
Consultant National Economics Budgeting, Venezuelan Parliamentary Commission Fiscal Reform, 1982. Consultant Trade and Industrialisation, Government Mauritius, 1983-1984. Visiting Professor, Catholic University, Lublin, Poland, 1983-1984.
Professor of Economics, Columbia University, New York City, New York, United States of America.
My interest in the interaction between institutions and market forces pervades my research, which ranges from welfare economics, through studies of economic development and planning, to my recent work on neoclassical political economy, and which includes such ‘out-riders’ as my papers (with G. Calvo) on the economics of hierarchies. Among my significant contribution I would rank my early paper on the regulation of natural gas companies in which I advanced a hypothesis, simultaneously with Avrech and Johnson, that rate return regulation encourages overcapitalisation on the part of regulated companies.
In the middle and late 1960s I explored the then popular notions of ‘disguised unemployment’, upholding the thesis that the phenomenon was the product of market-distorting institutions. I even undertook a lengthy study of Indian agriculture which showed, at least to my satisfaction, that in the absence of such distortions Lewis-type unemployment did not exist.
I also showed the relation (later associated with the names of Harris and Todaro) between urban minimum wage and urban unemployment in developing countries.
Most recently I have been collaborating with R. Findlay on problems of trade barriers and factor-price distortions in open economies. In this field, our contributions include the rigorous derivation of the relation between protection policies and shadow prices of factors. We have also modelled general equilibrium systems in which protection is generated through the interaction between the economy and the policy, and we have explored the effects of diverse poltical configurations on trade regimes.
We are currently extending our work to encompass problems of international factor mobility and of coalitions among international interest groups.
Children: Tadeusz, Krzysztof.