Born in Vienna in 1923, Kari Polanyi Levitt is Emerita Professor at McGill University, specializing in Political Economy and Economics of Development. Kari received a BSc (Economics) from the London School of Economics in 1947 and obtained an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto in 1959. She entered the Department of Economics at McGill in 1961 and retired in 1993. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies; is honorary president of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University; a recipient of the J. K. Galbraith Prize from the Progressive Economics Forum of Canada and a recipient of the Order of Canada. Among her publications are Life and Work of Karl Polanyi (1990); Karl Polanyi in Vienna (2006), co-edited with Kenneth McRobbie; Reclaiming Development: Independent Thought and Caribbean Community (2005); Essays on the Theory of Plantation Economy: A Historical and Institutional Approach to Caribbean Economic Development (2009), co-authored with Lloyd Best; and From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization: on Karl Polanyi and Other Essays (2013).
Kari Polanyi Levitt
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Thoughts on Mirowski and Neoliberalism from a Polanyian Perspective
Karl Polanyi demonstrated that Classical Liberalism and current Neoliberalism were organized political movements, but their successes sparked political backlashes against laissez-faire economics — a dialectic that continues to shape politics to this day.
Featuring this expert
Polanyi on Polanyi
In this series Polanyi reflects on an extraordinary life, and the extraordinary legacy of her family.
Introducing the Symposium on Neoliberalism
Is Neoliberalism a fixed set of ideas, or even an identifiable political movement?
This is Water (or is it Neoliberalism?)
A meditation on Vercelli, Vernengo and Levitt & Seccareccia