Page 115 - A Life Well-Lived Is a Beautiful Memory

Ajarn Bhanupong,

My Role Model

Archanun Kohpaiboon
2 March 2024

I wrote this short note to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Bhanupong Nidhiprabha
or we often call him, Ajarn Bhanupong. I was his former student in the early 1990s, and then
became his colleague at the Faculty of Economics, at Thammasat University later. I remember

that he introduced me to scholarly works published in leading economic journals. It is a very
crucial step for those who want to be professional economists.
In particular, I enrolled in the course entitled Financial Development taught by Ajarn
Bhanupong where he carefully selected relevant and recent literature on the subject. All students

were asked to prepare a one-page note, summarizing and providing comments on the assigned
papers. The note with the limited space forced me to make my interpretation of the academic work
and form my position on it. This seems to be an important practice for professional economists to
keep themselves up on the literature frontier. This inspired me to keep reading these works and

dream of having my own one day. Right now, I am still doing them every day in my professional
career.
In the last five years, I followed suit by adopting his teaching style: bundling relevant
literature and asking students to read them, summarize their main ideas, and discuss them in class.

I keep advising young scholars to keep doing this. This seems to be my great memory of Ajarn
Bhanupong.

Rest in peace.

Archanun Kohpaiboon is a Professor in the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat University.
His research interests include industrialization in Thailand, multinational enterprises, medical
tourism, and others. He is a consultant to international organizations including the World Bank,
and the Asian Development Bank. He has published three books and has written 15 book chapters
and 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Oxford Development Studies, Journal of
Asian Economics, and others. Archanun obtained a Ph.D. from the Australian National University.

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