Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals

Dr. A. Erinç Yeldan is a distinguished alumnus of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, earning his doctorate in Agricultural and Applied Economics in 1988. Currently he is serving as the secretary of Independent Social Scientists Alliance in Ankara. He also writes a weekly column on economic issues that appear in the national Turkish daily newspaper, Cumhuriyet. The column focuses on current national and global economic issues and is widely circulated and cited among professionals such as economists, political scientists, and researchers.

Dr. Yeldan is an internationally renowned scholar as well as a leading economist in regional economic development and public policy in Turkey and the Greater Middle Eastern region. Dr. Yeldan is an adviser to the Turkish Ministry of Development and assists in their efforts to evaluate alternative policies for economic development in Turkey and the surrounding region. He was instrumental in the formation of Turkey’s response to the International Monetary Fund’s proposed structural adjustment program in 2001. He helped to form public opinion that facilitated adoption of the program that has been accredited for the stability and prosperity the country experienced thereafter. Additionally, he has contributed to the development of new leaders in Turkey through leadership positions in Turkey’s Independent Social Scientists Alliance.

Dr. Yeldan has made many contributions in the field of research that has resulted in prominent tools in his profession. Most notably, he pioneered the use of computable general equilibrium models, which are now standard tools for modeling trade flows between countries. Dr. Yeldan has always been eager to share his academic accumulation and experience, which immensely contributed to the expansion of knowledge in Turkish universities and governmental institutions. He was one of the founders of the Faculty of Social Administrative and Social Sciences at Bilkent University, which became a leading faculty of social sciences not only in Turkey but in world rankings as well. After only three years at Bilkent University, he was promoted to associate professor and then granted full professorship, becoming the youngest full professor at Bilkent.

He is one of nine executive directors of the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) in New Delhi, a recipient of the Young Scientist Award of the Turkish Academy of Sciences, a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Massachusetts, and a visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota where he taught Applied General Equilibrium Analysis. The European Economic Association has recognized Dr. Yeldan as one of the world’s top 500 economists.

In naming Dr. Yeldan as a recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals, the selection committee cited his impressive contributions to economic policy formation in his own country and others, particularly India. He embodies the Land Grant mission by applying knowledge to improve decision-making and economic outcomes, and has done so in a particularly strategic region of the world.