Alain de Janvry is one of the leading agricultural development economists, a man of widely acknowledged international reputation, extensively cited for his seminal contributions to a broad array of fields, a major contributor to a large number of bilateral and international organizations on which his thinking has often had profound influence, and, on the Berkeley campus, a recognized leader in international development and a much appreciated teacher and former department chairman.

Alain de Janvry was born in France and educated in France and Spain in the fields of mathematics and philosophy. HE graduated from the Institut National Agronomique in Paris with an engineer degree and a specialization in agricultural economics. He came to the University of California at Berkeley as a Fulbright Fellow and received an M.S. in agricultural economics and an M.A. in statistics. His encounter with Professor George Kuznets and his close association with this distinguished professor induced him to remain at Berkeley for the Ph.D. degree. Under Professor Kuznets, he wrote an AAEA award winning dissertation in demand analysis and soon afterward joined the faculty of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Berkeley where he has developed his career to this day.

His research spans a remarkable breadth of fields, and there indeed few areas in agricultural economics where he has not made significant contributions. His publications include more than 150 articles and several books and monographs. His research has, in general, been guided by a deep concern with poverty, the welfare of rural households, and the quest for program designs and policy alternatives aimed at reducing the incidence of poverty. While he has systematically explored these subjects from the level of grassroot organizations to that of macropolicy, he has always searched for new theories and concepts, strong empiricism, and focused on the interactions between efficiency welfare, and the forces of political economy. He has been a pioneer in the field of political economy of reform, combining the rigors of mathematical neoclassical economics. He has the unusual ability to trespass across disciplines with the result that political scientist, sociologist, and anthropologists have commonly called him one of their own. That this work has also had a visible impact on our profession is reflected by the fact that he is one of the most frequently cited agricultural economists.

His research has opened new perspectives in the fields of demand analysis, behavior toward risk, technological innovations, land reform, rural development, price policies in general equilibrium models, equitable approaches to stabilization and adjustment, conflict management between aid and trade, household behavior under market failure, classical and neoclassical political economy, the theory of agrarian institutions, and environmental management in the context of rural development. The scope of his research is thus truly unusual as it spans from micro to macroeconomics and from the roles of markets to those of civil institutions and the state.

The leadership which Alain de Janvry has exercised in the field of international agricultural development is plainly visible through his extraordinary volume of publications and the attention they are receiving, his continued involvement with many international and bilateral organizations, his administrative roles at the University of California and the in the profession, and the many students he has taught and placed in key professional positions. He has been a widely sought and unselfish teacher on the Berkeley campus and throughout the world. And he has been successful in directly extending the results of even his most theoretical research to policy makers and development agencies, making him an effective man of action at the same time as creative scholar.