Vernon Wesley Ruttan

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Vernon Wesley Ruttan (1924–2008) was a leading development economist at the University of Minnesota, where he held the title of Regents Professor Emeritus in Economics and Applied Economics. His research focused on agricultural development, induced innovation, technical change and productivity growth, institutions, and development assistance policy. His 1971 book with Yujiro Hayami, Agricultural Development: An International Perspective, is a classic in the field and has been translated into several languages.

Education and career highlights: He earned a BA from Yale (1948) and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago (1950, 1952), where he studied with Nobel laureate Theodore Schultz. He held positions at the Tennessee Valley Authority, Purdue University, the President's Council of Economic Advisors, the Rockefeller Foundation at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and served as president of the Agricultural Development Council. Ruttan helped develop the induced-innovation model, which explains how farmers, businesses, scientists, and public officials adjust to land and labor endowments and to changes in supply and demand to drive technical and institutional change in agriculture. When land is scarce, progress tends to save land; when labor is scarce, progress tends to save labor.

Impact and honors: In Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? (2006) he argued that large, long-term government investment is often essential to develop broad technologies and spur growth, using six technology areas as examples including nuclear power. He was a fellow of several major associations, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, and received honorary degrees from Rutgers, Purdue, and Kiel, along with the USDA Distinguished Service Award and the Alexander von Humboldt Award. In 2010 the University of Minnesota renamed a campus building Ruttan Hall in his honor. His work remains highly cited in development economics.