Introduction

Abstract

In his Essays in Biography, Keynes (1951) wrote that
"the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts.
He must reach a high standard in several different directions
and must combine talents not often found together. He must
be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher in some
degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He
must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and
touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He
must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes
of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must
lie currently outside his regard. He must be purposeful and
disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible
as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician."
In our eyes, Professor Nanak Kakwani, in whose honour we edited this
Special Issue of the Journal of Income Distribution, possesses most, if not
all, of the qualities that Keynes considered essential in a good economist.