Cornelson Lecture
For over 35 years, the Cornelson Family Endowment has enabled the economics department to host the Cornelson Distinguished Lecture, an annual spring lecture by a prominent economist.
Select students in the economics department are invited to join the lecturer and members of the economics department for a reception and dinner before the lecture.
Previous Cornelson Lecturers include Nobel Laureates James Tobin, Oscar Arias Sanchez and Douglass C. North, previous Chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisors N. Gregory Mankiw and Alan Krueger, and James Poterba, current President of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
This February, we were joined by Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Furman engages in public policy through research, writing and teaching in a wide range of areas including U.S. and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets and competition policy. Previously Furman served eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including serving as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Project Syndicate and the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Past Cornelson Lecturers
Edward Barbier - Professor of Economics at Colorado State University and consultant to a variety of national and international agencies, he specializes in environmental and resource economics as well as international environmental policy.
Bridget Terry Long - Dean of Faculty and Saris Professor of Education and Economics at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, Long discussed how education and inequality are intertwined and shared remedies that could improve student achievement and attainment.
James Poterba - Mistui Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and current President of the National Bureau of Economic Research, his lecture was entitled: "Economic Implications of an Aging U.S. Population."
Christina H. Paxson - President of Brown University and Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Paxson addressed how COVID-19 forced change - both good and bad - in educational attainment and the way higher ed functions.
Dean Karlan - Professor of Economics at Yale University and President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, Karlan presented the 2015 Cornelson Lecture entitled: "Pragmatic Optimism in the Fight Against Poverty: Lessons from Behavioral Economics."
Cecilia E. Rouse - Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education and Founding Director of the Princeton University Education Research Section.
Joseph Stiglitz - Professor of Economics at Columbia University and recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), presented the 2018 lecture "Capitalism, Inequality and Globalization."
Daron Acemoglu - Awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005 as Best Economist Under Age 40, Acemoglu was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's "100 Global Thinkers for 2012."
Edward Glaeser - Professor of Economics at Harvard University and former Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Glaeser specializes in urban economics.