Scott M. Eddie

Scott M. Eddie

Fellow: Awarded 1974
Field of Study: Economic History

Competition: US & Canada

University of Toronto

Scott M. Eddie (Ph.D., MIT 1967) is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, where he has taught since 1971.  He is the author of four books and several dozen articles and book chapters resulting from his research on the economic history of Central and Eastern Europe and the exonomics of transition from central planning to a market economy.  Besides his teaching and research, Mr. Eddie has held administrative appointments at the University of Toronto as Director of the European Studies Program, Academic Coordinator of the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies, and Acting Director of the International Relations Program. Before coming to Toronto, he held earlier teaching appointments at Williams College, the University of the Philippines, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He was the inaugural Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, and also held the Mary Moody Northen Chair as Visiting Eminent Scholar at the Virginia Military Institute.  In Europe, he has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Vienna, the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and the Technical University of Berlin.  Among his academic homors is election to a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.  His research on economic history and transition economics has taken him on numerous occasions to Austria, the former Czechoslovakia, Germany (including the former German Democratic Republic), Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the former Yugoslavia.  Earlier research on land reform and land settlement was carried out in the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal.  His most recent book is Landownership in Eastern Germany before the Great War: A Quantitative Analysis (Oxford UP, 2008).

In 1991, Scott Eddie founded Fundus Foundation Canada in Ontario, and–with his colleague Dr. Iván Székely–its sister foundation, Fundus Alapítvány, in Budapest.  The first joint project of these two foundations was to assist in the transition to market economy in Central and Eastern Europe by donating back issues of professional journals in areas related to the economy (economics, finance, management, accounting, statistics, etc.) to libraries of universities and research institutes to fill gaps in their collections.  The journals originate from donations by Canadian university professors and other professionals out of their personal subscriptions, and are distributed free of charge by the Budapest foundation to recipient libraries.  This has turned out to be a popular and very well received action in the countries where it has operated (primarily Hungary and Slovakia).

Recently, in response to a request prompted by this activity of the Fundus foundations, Mr. Eddie has formed a small consulting group to advise on the founding and establishment of the library of the South East European University in the Republic of Macedonia.  The Fundus foundations are also involved in this project as suppliers of back issues of journals in several disciplines.  From their long experience and the specialized knowledge developed for the SEE University project, this group is now prepared to offer similar consulting services to library start-ups in other countries.

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