Prominent Croatian Economist and Academic Zvonimir Baletić Passes Away

On Monday, October 3, in Zagreb, at the age of 87, academic Zvonimir Baletić, a prominent Croatian economist, regular member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), and former minister in the Government of Democratic Unity, passed away, HAZU announced.

He was born in 1936 in Kljenak near Vrgorac. He began primary school in a refugee camp in El-Shatt, Egypt, and completed it in Dubrovnik. He finished high school in Split. He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb in 1959. From 1960 to 1961, he was an assistant at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb at the Department of Political Economy, and in 1961, he became an associate at the Agrarian Institute in Zagreb, soon going to London for a study stay where he prepared his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He obtained his PhD in economics in 1964 from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. That same year, he was elected as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics, as well as the director of the Agrarian Institute. In 1965, he received a Ford Foundation scholarship for postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago, where he worked on the topic of Agriculture in Economic Development under the mentorship of Nobel laureate Theodore W. Schultz.

Upon returning from the USA, he was elected as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb in the subject of Political Economy, and in 1968, he became an associate professor. Due to his political engagement during the Croatian Spring, he was banned from working at the Faculty and giving lectures at the University, as well as from appearing in public media. In 1974, he was employed at the Economic Institute in Zagreb. He was a researcher and leader of several scientific projects and a participant in numerous domestic and international scientific conferences. In 1982, he was appointed as a member of the Commission for Regional Development within the Program for Long-Term Stabilization of the Federal Executive Council of Yugoslavia. In the late 1980s, alongside his work at the Institute, he engaged internationally, particularly in the formation of the European Movement Croatia and the establishment of a multiparty system, and he was among the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia.

After the collapse of the communist regime in 1990, he returned to the Faculty of Political Science as a full professor, retaining his position as a scientific advisor at the Economic Institute. He taught in postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Political Science and the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb.

In August 1991, he became a member of the Government of Democratic Unity as a minister without portfolio responsible for certain missions and for relations with UNPROFOR. He remained in the Government until February 1993 when he was elected as the director of the Economic Institute in Zagreb. He left the position of director of the Economic Institute in 1999. At the same time, he was an editor at the Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute for the field of economics, and for some time a member of the management board.

He was elected as a regular member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, in the Class for Social Sciences, in 2004, and in 2005, as a regular member of the Académie Européene des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres in Paris. From 2008 until his death, academic Zvonimir Baletić was the president of the Scientific Council for Economic Research and the Croatian Economy of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and from 2011 to 2016, he was the head of the Institute for Scientific Research and Artistic Work of HAZU in Vukovar. From 2005 to 2007, he was a member of the National Council for Science of the Republic of Croatia.

In addition to collaborating in numerous domestic and foreign journals, academic Baletić was a member of the editorial board of several journals, such as Naše teme, Politička misao, Rasprave o migracijama, Hrvatski gospodarski glasnik, Hrvatsko Sveučilište, and especially Ekonomski pregled. He was the editor of several books and publications. He translated several significant theoretical works from economics from English and French into Croatian. He was a member of the Scientific Section of the Union of Economists of Yugoslavia, the European Economic Association, the Croatian Economic Society, the Scientific Society of Economists, and the Croatian Political Science Association, and he was also a collaborator of the International Center for Economic Development in San Francisco and the European Association for Small Business in St. Gallen.

He was awarded the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Blaž Lorković and the Commemorative Medal of the Homeland War.