Erik Thorbecke

H. E. Babcock Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Graduate School and International Professor at Cornell University

Erik Thorbecke is a co-originator of the most widely used Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measure. He played a significant role in the development, use and popularization of the Social Accounting Matrix concept and contributed to many other areas of economic and agricultural development including the interrelationship among growth inequality and poverty, the impact of globalization on poverty worldwide and the anatomy of African development.
Erik Thorbecke has interesting roots. His paternal great grandfather, Johan Rudolf Thorbecke was the main architect of the present Dutch Constitution of 1848. He served as Prime Minister on three different occasions and was an internationalist statesman at heart. His mother, although American by nationality, was born in France and raised in Paris. Her great grandfather was Fernando Wood who, around the US Civil War was mayor of New York City before becoming chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the US Congress.