Michael Spence

Speaker Michael Spence, a Nobel Laureate, became a professor of economics at the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business in September 2010. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Professor Spence is an expert in economic policy in emerging markets, the economics of information, and the impact of leadership on economic growth. He was the chairman of the independent Commission on Growth and Development from 2006 to 2010. He was focusing there on strategies for producing rapid and sustainable economic growth while reducing poverty. Speaker Michael Spence, is a consultant to PIMCO, a senior adviser at Oak Hill Investment Management. He is a member of the board of the Stanford Management Company, as well as several public and private companies.

In 2001, Professor Spence was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the analysis of markets with asymmetric information. He has also received many other honors and awards, including the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association in 1981. Professor Spence has authored three books and 50 articles. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society.

Professor Spence was also the Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999. Prior to that, he was a professor of economics and business administration at Harvard University, where he also served as chairman of its economics department and dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Spence earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972, a B.A./M.A. from Oxford University in 1968, and a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Princeton University in 1966.