Carroll Round

Dr. Jonathan Levin

2012 Keynote Speaker

Jonathan Levin is Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at Stanford University, where he is also Professor by Courtesy in the Graduate School of Business and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

His research is in the field of industrial organization, particularly the economics of contracting, organizations, and market design. His current research includes projects on internet markets, auction design, and health insurance.

In 2011, he received the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark Medal as the economist under the age of forty who has made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Professor Levin is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and has been a Sloan Research Fellow, an NSF Career Award recipient, and winner of department and school-wide teaching awards at Stanford. 

Professor Levin earned undergraduate degrees in Math and English from Stanford, an M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and his Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. He joined the Stanford faculty in 2000, and lives in Palo Alto with his wife and three children.

Dr. Joseph Stiglitz

2011 Keynote Speaker

Professor Stiglitz is currently University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000. In 2008 he was asked by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which released its final report in September 2009. In 2009 he was appointed by the President of the United Nations General Assembly as chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System, which also released its report in September 2009.

Dr. Jagdish Bhagwati

2011 Keynote Speaker

Professor Bhagwati is University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT (1991-93), Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO. He has served on the Expert Group appointed by the Director General of the WTO on the Future of the WTO and the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the future of UNCTAD.

Bhagwati is the recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, the latest three on his 70th birthday, he has also received several prizes and honorary degrees, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star).  He has also authored over 50 volumes and 300 articles, and is a Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Dr. Philip I. Levy

2008 & 2010 Distinguished Lecturer

Dr. Levy is currently a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, he served as an economics professor at Yale University from 1994 to 2003. He then served as a Senior Economist for Trade on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005 and on the Secretary of State's policy planning staff from 2005 to 2006. Dr. Levy’s research focuses on a range of international economics topics ranging from the WTO to U.S.-China trade relations.

Dr. Robert C. Merton

2010 Keynote Speaker

Robert C. Merton received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics along with Myron Scholes for his groundbreaking contributions to financial economics. Along with the late Fischer Black, Dr. Myron Scholes published what is known today as the Black-Scholes options pricing model. Professor Merton utilized a different methodology that allowed him to derive the same model and also generalized its applicability beyond the scope of options pricing.

Professor Merton is currently the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at the Harvard Business School. Prior to joining the Business School’s faculty in 1988, he served for 18 years as a faculty member of MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Dr. Lant Pritchett

2010 Keynote Speaker

Professor Pritchett is currently Professor of the Practice of International Development and Faculty Chair of the Masters in Public Policy in International Development program at the Harvard Kennedy School. After graduating from MIT with a Ph.D in economics, Professor Pritchett had a long and distinguished career at the World Bank, where he served from 1988 to 1998 and from 2004 to 2007. While there, he helped produce a number of World Bank publications, including several World Development Reports.

Recognized for his work as a development economist, Professor Pritchett is the author of the book Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility. He also authored the seminal divergence theory paper, Divergence, Big Time.

Dr. Eric S. Maskin

2009 Keynote Speaker

Eric S. Maskin is the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting lecturer at Princeton University. In 2007, Dr. Maskin received the Nobel Prize in Economics along with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson for his pioneering work on mechanism design theory, the concept of how to create institutions that will achieve particular social or economic goals.

Dr. Maskin has also made significant contributions to the theory of income inequality and the study of intellectual property rights and political economy. His current research interests include comparing different electoral rules, examining the causes of inequality, and studying coalition formation.

Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2009 Keynote Speaker

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the Senior Scientific Advisor for Universa Investments and a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. He founded Empirica Capital in 1999 and has held senior trading positions at Credit Suisse First Boston (now Credit Suisse), UBS, BNP Paribas, Indosuez (now Calyon), and Bankers Trust (now Deutsche Bank). He has also advised central banks and several government agencies on tail risk and risk management.

Dr. Taleb is also a best-selling author who has written a number of books including The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, and The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Black Swan appeared on the New York Times’ bestseller list for seventeen straight weeks and has sold more than 1.5 million copies.

Dr. Susan C. Athey

2008 Keynote Speaker

Susan Athey is a professor of economics at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard, she taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. In 2007, Dr. Athey was the first woman to receive the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association. One of the most prestigious awards in the field, the John Bates Clark Medal is awarded to an economist under forty who is deemed to have made a significant “contribution to economic thought and knowledge.” In 2000, she also received the Elaine Bennett research award, which is presented every year to a distinguished young female economist.

Dr. Athey is known for her work on auctions and in specific, her research on collusion among firms in the auction process and how governments can overcome this issue to promote a more competitive bidding process. Her recent research has focused on dynamic games and contracts with hidden information.

Dr. Steven Radelet

2008 Keynote Speaker

Steven Radelet is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD). Prior to joining the CGD in 2002, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia from 2000 to 2002 and was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development from 1990 to 2000. As Deputy Assistant Secretary, he was responsible for overseeing United States’ financial policy regarding the region including Turkey’s financial crisis and Pakistan’s debt restructuring.

At the CGD, Dr. Radelet works on issues related to developing countries such as foreign aid, debt, economic growth, and trade relations between developed and developing countries.

Dr. Grant D. Aldonas

2007 Keynote Speaker

Grant D. Aldonas holds the William M. Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and has had a distinguished legal, business, and public service career. Prior to joining CSIS, Mr. Aldonas worked at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he focused on international trade, investment, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility. From 2001 to 2005, he also served as the Undersecretary of Commerce in the Bush administration.

Dr. Francois Bourguignon

2007 Keynote Speaker

François Bourguignon is the current director of the Paris School of Economics. From 2003 to 2007, he also served as the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank.

During his tenure, Dr. Bourguignon played a crucial role in the founding of the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation Initiative, which seeks to evaluate the impact of various World Bank development projects. He was also crucial in shaping the 2006 World Development Report and its emphasis on equity as an important component of development. In 2007, he also led the World Bank’s Long-term Strategic Exercise, which outlined the “challenges that would be central to a World Bank Group strategy for global inclusiveness and sustainability.”

Dr. Thomas C. Schelling

2006 Keynote Speaker

Thomas C. Schelling is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Prior to 1990, he served as a faculty member of Harvard University in the economics department, the Center for International Affairs, and the Kennedy School of Government. Other than economics, Dr. Schelling has also made distinguished contributions to the fields of international affairs and security studies. He is probably most well-known for his book The Strategy of Conflict, which pioneered the idea of game theory as a framework through which to approach the social sciences.

In 2005, along with Robert J. Aumann, Dr. Schelling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his application of game theory to examine the occurrence of conflict and cooperation between strategic actors.

Dr. Kemal Dervis

2006 Keynote Speaker

Kemal Derviş is Vice President and Director of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining the Brookings Institute, Dr. Derviş served as the executive head of the United Nations Development Programme. As Turkey’s Minister of Economic Affairs from 2001-2, Dr. Derviş also played an instrumental role in stabilizing the country and helping it recover from its 2001 financial crisis.

Dr. Edwin Truman

2002 & 2005 Keynote Speaker

Edwin M. Truman is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Previously, he served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs from 1998 to 2001 and from 1977 to 1988, was Director and later Staff Director of the Division of International Finance of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His economics research is currently focused on international finance, the International Monetary Fund, and sovereign wealth funds.

Dr. Truman has also served in numerous international groups devoted to economic and financial issues such as the Financial Stability Forum’s Working Group on Highly Leveraged Institutions (1999-2000) and the G-22 Working Party on Transparency and Accountability (1998).

Dr. William Easterly

2005 Keynote Speaker

William Easterly is a Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is also an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institute. He is the author of two books, The White Man’s Burden and The Elusive Quest for Growth.

Dr. Easterly’s economic research focuses on long-run economic growth factors, political economy development issues, and the efficacy of foreign aid. He is an advocate of a bottoms-up approach to international aid and has appeared in a number of publications including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Dr. Maurice Obstfeld

2005 Keynote Speaker

Maurice Obstfeld is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International and Development Economic Research at the University of California, Berkley. He previously served in the economics departments of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. He has also served in various advisory roles for the European Commission, the IMF, the World Bank, and several international central banks.

Dr. Obstfeld is very well-known for his international economics work. His economic research focuses on international finance and macroeconomic topics such as exchange rates and global capital markets.

Dr. John F. Nash, Jr.

2004 Keynote Speaker

John F. Nash is a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Economics. In 1994, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics, along with Professor John C. Harsanyi and Professor Reinhard Selten, for his seminal contribution to game theory. Dr. Nash was the first to note the distinction between cooperate and non-cooperative games and developed the equilibrium concept that is known today as Nash Equilibrium.

Dr. Peter R. Orszag

2004 Keynote Speaker

Peter Orszag is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, which assists the President in preparing the federal budget and supervises its implementation in the federal agencies. From 2007 to 2008, he was the director of the Congressional Budget Office. He previously was the Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institute. In the 1990s, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy after serving as a Senior Advisor and Senior Economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Dr. John Williamson

2002 & 2003 Keynote Speaker

John Williamson is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and has worked there since 1981. In 2001, he was project director for the UN High-Level Panel on Financing for Development and served from 1996 to 1999 as chief economist for South Asia at the World Bank. He has authored or coauthored numerous studies on international monetary and development issues and is most famous for creating the ten economic policy recommendations that are now known as the “Washington Consensus.”.

Dr. R. Glenn Hubbard

2003 Keynote Speaker

R. Glenn Hubbard is the current Dean of Columbia Business School and the Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics. He also serves as a visiting scholar at the American Economic Institute. From 2001 to 2003, he was the Chairmen of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Dr. Hubbard also serves on the Boards of Directors of Automatic Data Processing, BlackRock Closed-End Funds, KKR Financial Holdings, and Metlife.

Dr. Lawrence B. Lindsey

2002 Keynote Speaker

Lawrence B. Lindsey is President and CEO of the Lindsey Group, an economic advisory firm he founded in 2003, and a visiting scholar at the American Economic Institute. Since serving as a staff economist during President Reagan’s administration, he has served in various economic advisory positions until 2002. Most notably, he was a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997 and was the Director of the National Economic Council from 2001 to 2002.