On Thursday, 26 May 2016, Dale W. Jorgenson received an Honorary Degree by the Universitat de València. The celebration was held in the historic building ‘La Nau’. His mentors were Matilde Mas and Francisco Pérez, both Professors of the Universitat de València and Ivie Researchers. Francisco Pérez was in charge of reading the laudatio, which highlighted the key theoretical and empirical contributions of Jorgenson, stressing that the backdrop of many of Jorgenson’s works is a subject that generates the greatest interest in economics since its emergence as a distinct scientific field: factors which drive progress.

In his lectio, Dale W. Jorgenson said that productivity and economic growth of the world economy are experiencing "a fundamental transformation", as a result of the increasing advances based on contributions by various assets, physical and human, that improve productivity, and the reduction in the weight of exogenous technical progress. Jorgenson also noted that world economic growth has accelerated during the 21st century, mainly due to the pace of emerging economies, some of which, like China, have become leading world economies.