Page 75 - A Life Well-Lived Is a Beautiful Memory

Professor

Bhanupong

Nidhiprabha

Peter Warr
27 February 2024 Bhanupong and Peter Warr, 1998

Bhanupong Nidhiprabha was a valued colleague and a close personal friend. Our first meeting
was at Thammasat University in the late 1980s. It was a very fortunate meeting for me. I was on
sabbatical leave from my position at the Australian National University in Canberra and I was
teaching a course at Thammasat. I had been asked by the World Bank to join a large multi-country
project studying macroeconomic policy in many developing countries. My job was to conduct

the country study for Thailand. It was a great opportunity for me, but I was seriously worried.
My academic field was not macroeconomics, but microeconomics and international trade. Even
more worrying was that although I was keen to learn about Thailand, my knowledge of the Thai

economy was limited. Everyone agreed that I needed a very good Thai collaborator.
My old friend, Bandid Nijathaworn, then teaching at Thammasat, had initially agreed to
join me in the project. Soon afterwards he was offered a too-good-to-refuse appointment at the
International Monetary Fund in Washington, which meant he would soon be leaving to take up
that job. I asked Bandid for his advice about a replacement. He immediately recommended another

Thammasat faculty member, Dr. Bhanupong Nidhiprabha. He described Bhanupong as a recent
Johns Hopkins University graduate and a specialist on Thailand’s macroeconomic policy. He also
said that Bhanupong and I would probably get along well, even though Bandid knew that I could

sometimes be argumentative. What great advice that turned out to be.
Fortunately, Bhanupong agreed to join me. I found that he was a quiet and thoughtful man
and that his knowledge of macroeconomics was formidable. Over the next two years or more,
we worked intensively together on all aspects of Thai macroeconomic policy. In this work, I
benefited greatly from his intellectual brilliance as an economist and his extensive knowledge of

his country. Our work on the project led to our co-authored book on Thailand’s macroeconomic

Bhanupong Nidhiprabha 75