ITHACA, N.Y. -- Béla Greskovits, a political economist from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), will present the 1998 Einaudi Lecture Sept. 29 at 4:30 p.m. in the A.D. White House on the Cornell University campus.

A comparativist with a doctorate in economics, Greskovits has been a member of the Political Science Department at the Central European University since the university's founding by George Soros in 1991. He will speak on "Rival Views of the Post-communist Market Society." The lecture is open to the public.

"The lecture presents the debate on post-communist transformation with two questions in its focus," says Greskovits. "Is the free market a condition of or a threat to political freedom, and is the communist legacy a liability or an asset from the viewpoint of the emerging democratic capitalism?"

In addition to his lecture as the Einaudi Chair in European and International Studies at Cornell for 1998-1999, Greskovits is teaching "Political Economy of Post-communist Transformations" in the government department this semester (with the course cross-listed in Industrial and Labor Relations); and he will co-teach "The Political Economy of Market Reform" with Hector Schamis, assistant professor of government, in the spring.

Fluent in English, Hungarian and German, and also conversant in Russian and Polish, Greskovits is the author of numerous articles in English and Hungarian comparing post-communist political and economic transitions with each other and with the Latin American experience. He also is the author of the book, The Political Economy of Protest and Patience (Central European University Press/Cornell University Press, 1998). His current research examines how the institutional and personal relationship between prime ministers and finance ministers shape the trajectories of economic reform in central and eastern Europe.

The Luigi Einaudi Chair in European and International Studies was established by Cornell's Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies in 1987 to honor Luigi Einaudi, first president of the Italian Republic, and his many contributions to the fields of economics, political science, modern European history and European integration.

Administered by the Institute for European Studies, the chair brings distinguished European scholars working in fields related to Einaudi's interests to the Cornell campus annually to teach and give a public lecture. The Luigi Einaudi Chair is the first at a major American university to be named after a statesman of modern Europe. As well as pointing to Einaudi's signal contributions to the revival of European democracy after World War II, it strengthens and expands cultural ties between the United States and Western Europe.

For more information, call Cornell's Institute for European Studies at (607) 255-7592.