Lawrence M v D Schloss Economics Prize (2016)

Schloss 2015
Nora Lustig

Mr. Lawrence M. v. D. Schloss, 1976 cum laude graduate from Tulane University, now President of Angelo, Gordon & Co., an alternative investment manager, and member of its executive committee has endowed a Lawrence M. v. D. Schloss Prize for Excellence in Economics. “The Schloss Prize is to be offered to outstanding full professors, associate professors, or assistant professors, or graduate or undergraduate students, who do outstanding work in the Department of Economics.”

The 2016 recipient of the Schloss Prize is Nora Lustig for Excellence in Research.

Nora Lustig is the Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, an appointment that also extends from the Department of Economics to the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies and to the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research. She is also the Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQI) at Tulane University. She is internationally recognized as one of the leading experts on inequality and poverty, especially with a focus on Latin American countries. She received her Ph.D. in economics at the University of California – Berkeley in 1979, and has held an array of prestigious positions: George Washington University, the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, Mexico (where she also served as President of the Universidad), and El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City. She has had affiliations with the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., the Inter-American Dialogue, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the Brookings Institution, and she is a founding member and past president of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).

Nora’s recent research accomplishments are truly outstanding. In the last year, Nora has had published or accepted the following articles and book chapters:

  • “Can a Poverty-reducing and Progressive Tax and Transfer System Hurt the Poor?” (with Sean Higgins), forthcoming in Journal of Development Economics
  • “Deconstructing the Decline in Inequality in Latin America” (with Luis F. López-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez), forthcoming in Kaushik Basu and Joseph Stiglitz (eds.), Proceedings of IEA Roundtable on Shared Prosperity and Growth, Palgrave-Macmillan
  • “Fiscal Policy, Income Redistribution and Poverty Reduction in Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay,” forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 17th World Congress of the International Economic Association
  • “Fiscal Redistribution and Ethno-racial Inequality in Bolivia, Brazil and Guatemala,” Latin America Research Review (2015)
  • “El impacto del sistema tributario y el gasto social en la distribución del ingreso y la pobreza en América Latina: Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, México, Perú y Uruguay,” El Trimestre Economico (2015)
  • “Appraising Cross-National Income Inequality Databases: An Introduction” (with Francisco H. G. Ferreira and Dan Teles), Journal of Economic Inequality (2015)
  • “Income Redistribution and Poverty Reduction in Latin America: The Role of Social Spending and Taxation in Achieving Development Goals," Development Journal - Society For International Development (2015)
  • “Fiscal Policy, Inequality and the Ethnic Divide in Guatemala” (with Maynor Cabrera and Hilcias Moran), World Development (2015)
  • “Comparing the Incidence of Taxes and Social Spending in Brazil and the United States” (with Sean Higgins, Whitney Ruble, and Tim Smeeding), Review of Income and Wealth (2015)
  • “Gasto social, redistribución del ingreso y reducción de la pobreza en México: evolución y comparación con Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay” (with Luis F. López-Calva, John Scott, and Andres Castañeda), in Rodolfo de la Torre, Eduardo Rodríguez-Oreggia, and Isidro Soloaga (eds.), Política social y bienestar: México desde el año 2000 (2015)
  • “The Curse of Volatile Food Prices: Policy Dilemmas in the Developing World,” forthcoming chapter in George Mavrotas (ed.), Natural Resources and Development: Curse or Blessing?, Edward Elgar Publishers
  • “A Long-term Perspective on Inequality and Human Development in Latin America” (with Luis Felipe López-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez), Introduction to Special Issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2015)
  • “The Redistributive Impact of Government Spending on Education and Health: Evidence from 13 Developing Countries in the Commitment to Equity Project," Chapter 17 in Sanjeev Gupta, Michael Keen, Benedict Clements, and Ruud de Mooij (eds.), Inequality and Fiscal Policy, International Monetary Fund (2015)
  • “Inequality and Fiscal Redistribution in Emerging Economies,” Chapter 7 in In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All, OECD Publishing (2015)
  • “Inequality, Mobility and Middle Classes in Latin America” (with Joao Pedro Azevedo, Luis F. López-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez), chapter in Latin America’s Emerging Middle Class, Palgrave McMillan (2015)
  • “Crisis, Exchange Rate Management and Inequality: Lessons from Latin America” (with Jaime Ros), Chapter 8 in Managing the Middle-Income Transition: Challenges Facing the People’s Republic of China, Juzhong Zhuang, Paul Vandenberg, and Yiping Huang (eds.), Oxford University Press (2015).

Nora has also been very successful in generating external support for her research, including grants from:

  • Commitment to Equity Institute: Research and Policy Tools, Data Center and Advisory and Training on Fiscal Policy, Principal Investigator, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, $4,933,201, to support the Commitment to Equity Institute’s activities for five years
  • The Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty in Low-income Countries: Applying the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Framework to Ghana and Tanzania, Principal Investigator, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, $581,162, to support the Commitment to Equity Institute’s analysis of fiscal policy in developing countries.

More details on Nora's activities can be found on her Tulane website, at http://www.noralustig.org/. The Department of Economics is proud of Nora's accomplishments.

The Department’s selection committee (Alan Barreca, Doug Harris, Jon Pritchett, and James Alm) was unanimous in recommending that Nora be the 2016 recipient of the Lawrence M. v. D. Schloss Prize for Excellence in Economics.

Mr. Schloss has had a distinguished career in the financial services industry. Following his 1976 graduation from Tulane, he earned an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania in 1978. He then joined Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) in 1978 as an investment banker, and during his 22 years at DLJ rose to become Chairman of DLJ's Merchant Banking Division. Upon the acquisition of DLJ by Credit Suisse in 2000, he became the Global Head of CSFB Private Equity, its $32 billion alternative asset investment management business. In 2004, he founded and became Chairman and Chief Executive Office of Diamond Castle Holdings, a private equity firm. In 2010 he was appointed New York City's Deputy Comptroller for Pensions and the Chief Investment Officer and Trustee of the New York City pension funds, whose assets grew from $100 billion to $145 billion under his leadership. He was named 2012 CIO of The Year - Large Public Pension Funds by Institutional Investor. Most recently, Mr. Schloss served as President of Angelo, Gordon & Co., an alternative investment manager.

In addition to serving on the Board of Trustees of Tulane University, Mr. Schloss is the Vice Chairman of the New York Police and Fire Widows' Fund and the Children's Benefit Fund, and he has served on the boards of directors of numerous public and private companies.

The Department of Economics is very grateful to Mr. Schloss for his generous and ongoing support, which has made possible the recognition of Nora’s accomplishments. Previous Schloss Prize winners are Marco Castaneda (2009), Jay Shimshack (2010), Stefano Barbieri (2011), Keith Finlay (2012), Douglas Nelson (2012), Alan Barreca (2013), Jon Pritchett (2013), Doug Harris (2014), Sean Higgins (2014), and James Alm (2015).