Professor Werner Baer was a vital member of the IRIBA team, and we were shocked when he passed away after a short illness earlier this year. The Jorge Paulo Lemann Endowed Chair in Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Werner was a giant in Brazilian Studies and his book The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development, now in its 7th edition, remains essential reading for anyone interested in the country.
In honour of his memory, a special issue of The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance has been dedicated to Professor Baer. The idea of this open access Special Issue initially came from him and is based on the IRIBA research.
As the dedication says:
“Over his long and varied career, Werner established a reputation as one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of Brazil. His initial work starting in the late 1950s focused on the issues of structural transformation and industrialization. The 1970s and 1980s saw a series of publications in leading journals in which Werner explored the vital policy issues of the day, among them the debt adjustment crisis and the transition from military to civilian rule. More recently, Werner’s research shifted focus, analyzing the Brazilian economy as it addressed globalization while simultaneously tackling ingrained poverty and inequality.”
For the IRIBA project, Werner Baer was looking at Brazilian infrastructure issues. He discussed his take on Brazil, and the project, in a visit to Manchester in 2014:
