Cornelson Lecture
For over 30 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 April, we were joined by Co-Chair of the Food Economics Commission, Ravi Kanbur. His main expertise is development economics, public economics and economic theory. He is well known for his role in policy analysis and engagement in international development. He has served on the senior staff of the World Bank including as Chief Economist for Africa. He is also published in the leading economics journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory and Economic Journal. The RePEc citation-based rankings place him in the top 1% of academic economists in the world.
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.