Lawrence Summers to Deliver Annual Economics Lecture

Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University’s Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, will deliver the annual economics department lecture on Monday, March 31, at 4:30 p.m. in Weinstein Auditorium.

The title of his talk is “The American Economic Growth Challenge.” The event is free and open to the public.

During the past two decades, Summers has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including as the 71st secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury under President Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, and vice president of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank.

“Summers has been at the center of macroeconomic policymaking for the past 25 years, and this is an exciting chance for the Smith community to hear from one of the world’s leading economists,” says Charles Staelin, chair of the Smith College Department of Economics.

Summers received a bachelor of science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a doctorate from Harvard in 1982. In 1983 he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty.

In 1987 Summers became the first social scientist to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to an outstanding American economist under the age of 40. He is currently the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and the board chair-elect of the Center for Global Development.