2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics Eric S. Maskin was conferred the title of honorary professorship fromTsinghuaUniversityonNovember 8, 2007.The day also saw the reunion of Professor Marskin and his five Chinese students graduating from Harvard, who currently are all faculty members at Tsinghua SEM.

The conferring ceremony was held at the Reception Hall of theMainBuildingof the University. Witnessed by more than 200 Tsinghua faculty members and students, Professor Hu Heping, Vice President of Tsinghua University conferred the title of honorary professorship to the distinguished economist.

(Vice President Hu Heping confers the title of honorary professorship to Professor Maskin)

Born inNew York Cityin 1950, Eric S. Maskin is currently the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science, at the Institute for Advanced Study,Princeton,U.S.Along with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson, Professor Maskin received the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory." Maskin earned his B.A. in Mathematics fromHarvardUniversityin 1972, his M.A. in Applied Mathematics fromHarvardUniversityin 1974, and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics fromHarvardUniversityin 1976. He received an honorary M.A. fromCambridgeUniversityin 1977. He was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1981, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and Fellow of the European Economic Association in 2004. Maskin’s work in economic theory has had a deep influence on many areas of economics, political science, and law. His current focus is work on mechanism design, repeated games, income inequality, and the theory of voting.

Professor Maskin supervised five Chinese students when he worked atHarvardUniversity. And these five studentsare all renowned economists now; more interestingly, all of them currently are faculty members of Tsinghua SEM. They are Professor Qian Yingyi, Professor Bai Chong-en, Professor Li Daokui, Professor Wang Yijiang and Professor Xu Chenggang.

Professor Maskin with his five Chinese students

(From the left: Wang Yijiang, Qian Yingyi, Eric S. Maskin, Xu Chenggang, Li Daokui, Bai Chong-en)

Professor Qian Yingyi, Dean of School of Economics and Management presided over the ceremony. In his speech, Dean Qian said he was “lucky to be the first Chinese student under Professor Maskin's supervision, and Tsinghua is lucky to have all these five students as faculty members at School of Economics and Management."

In his remarks, Professor Maskin said the most important connection for him at Tsinghua is that "five people who matter most to him are connected with Tsinghua." “Yingyi, Chenggang, Yijiang, Daokui, and Chong-en, they are all my students, and they are really part of my family now”, said Professor Maskin. He said he is "very happy to see how well economics education is progressing inChinaand Tsinghua is playing an important role on that".

After the conferring ceremony, Professor Hu Heping presented Professor Maskin with a souvenir on behalf of the University. The 2007 Nobel Laureate then delivered a speech entitled “why do we procrastinate” and answered questions from the audience later.|Professor Maskin's lecture PPT