Erik Dietzenbacher awarded with Ricardo Torres Gaitán Chair

Professor Erik Dietzenbacher was awarded the Riccardo Torres Gaitán Chair by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The appointment is a tribute to Dietzenbacher’s continued commitment to academic excellence and serves to promote and deepen research in the field of economic development.

The Ricardo Torres Gaitán Chair of the UNAM's Institute of Economic Research (IIEc) was awarded to Dietzenbacher during a festive ceremony at the Mexican university. The distinguished chair serves (i) to strengthen connections between UNAM (a strategic partner of the UG) and other national and international academic, cultural and/or governmental institutions and (ii) to promote and deepen research, especially in the field of economic development. The chair is named after the renowned Mexican economist Ricardo Torres Gaitán, who was one of the founding figures that gave identity to UNAM's Institute of Economic Research (IIEc).

Outstanding service of international importance

Dietzenbacher is Professor of Interindustry Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB). His research expertise lies in input-output analysis, economic growth, global supply chains, and emissions trade. Apart from his position at the University of Groningen, he has also been Affiliate Research Professor at the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Guest Professor at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (GUCAS) in Beijing.

Additionally, Dietzenbacher was President of the International Input-Output Association (IIOA), is Honorary President of the Chinese Input-Output Association (CIOA), Honorary Fellow of the Hispanic-American Input-Output Society (SHAIO), and serves on the advisory board of the Regional Research Institute (RRI) at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Between 2009 and 2012, he was the project coordinator of ‘World Input-Output Database: Construction and Applications’ (WIOD), a large-scale collaborative research project that was funded by the EU in its 7th Framework Programme. In 2021, he was awarded a Royal Decoration (Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau) for outstanding service of international importance.

Ricardo Torres Gaitán

The director of the IIEc, Armando Sánchez Vargas, describes Dietzenbacher as an outstanding intellectual with unwavering commitment to academic excellence and is honored to award him the Ricardo Torres Gaitán Chair. "This event is not only a significant academic recognition, it also symbolizes the commemoration of the outstanding contributions and dedication of Ricardo Torres Gaitán to our educational community, and reflects his lasting influence in the academic field”, the institute director stated. Torres Gaitán was professor emeritus at UNAM from the late 1970s and in 1988 received the National University Award in the area of Teaching in Social Sciences. He was a pioneer in the study of fundamental topics such as monetary policy, trade relations in Mexico and Latin America, crisis and unemployment, inflation and economic development.