The Final Return to Melbourne
In late 2002, Corden retired from SAIS and returned with Dorothy to live in Melbourne. Their return was motivated by concern for Dorothy's health as she had begun to exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
Dorothy's condition deteriorated over the years and she died in 2010 in a nursing home. She and Max were married for over 50 years and they were a devoted couple. Dorothy's kindness to Max's students, as the author can testify, was something none of them will forget. Sadly, their daughter Jane died in Melbourne in 2019 after a short illness.After their return to Australia, Corden was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the highest grade of the Order. It was awarded ‘for service as a leading international economist, particularly in the areas of international trade and finance policy development' (Corden 2018: 207). He has received many other awards including Fellow of the British Academy, President of the Economic Society of Australia and membership of the Group of Thirty from 1982-1990. His alma mater, the University of Melbourne, has renamed the Department as the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, joining Max's name with that of another distinguished economist and Jewish emigrant from Breslau, Heinz Arndt. The University has also established an Annual Corden Lecture in his honour and the list of speakers to date includes many leading international economists, some of them former students of Corden. Recently, in a fitting tribute, Nuffield College has established a Max Corden Scholarship in International Economics.
Martin Wolf, in his Foreword to Corden's memoirs, calls him ‘Australia's greatest living economist' (Wolf in ibid.: ix). A recent profile of Corden in an Australian national newspaper referred to him as ‘a national treasure' (The Australian Financial Review, 14-15 April 2018: 45). In addition, as all his students and multitude of friends and admirers all over the world will attest, Corden is not merely a great economist but also a wonderful person. He is without malice and is free from the oversized ego which many great economists acquire. In his nineties, he continues to be active and engaged in economics—witness a recent published paper, co-authored with Ross Garnaut, on the economic consequences of President Trump's policies (see Corden and Garnaut 2018). Australia is known as the “Lucky Country” and there is no doubt that this expression is apt where Max Corden is concerned. But Oxford can also count itself lucky to have been the scene of some of his most notable contributions to international economics.