INVISIBLE HAND SPEAKER SERIES
Are you interested in economic growth and development? If so, tune into the Invisible Hand Speaker Series! The Invisible Hand Speaker Series is an annual hybrid conference held every spring by the Undergraduate Economics Society. This year, we have three in-person speakers and two virtual speakers. The conference will be held over three days, March 22nd, March 23rd, and March 25th. Speakers will be coming from Harvard University, the Brookings Institute, and Brown University.
Here is the RSVP form: https://forms.gle/Kxuz9scSmSQnk1Up9. Sign up now before spots run out! There will be networking sessions after each talk.
In-person speakers:
1. Oded Galor, Brown University - March 23rd, 5-6 pm, GENTRY 131
Oded Galor is the founder of Unified Growth Theory. He has contributed to the understanding of the process of development over the entire course of human history and the role of deep-rooted factors in the transition from stagnation to growth and in the emergence of vast inequality across the globe. Moreover, he has pioneered the exploration of the impact of evolutionary processes, population diversity, and inequality on the process of development over most of human existence. His research has redirected research in the field of economic growth to the exploration of the long shadow of history and to the role of biogeographical forces in comparative economic development. It has spawned influential literature studying the impact of inequality on the process of development, the interaction between human adaptation and economic development, the transition from stagnation to growth, and the impact of human diversity on comparative economic development.
2. Gautam Rao, Harvard University - March 25th, 1-2 pm, STUDENT UNION 331
I am an Associate Professor (without tenure) at the Department of Economics at Harvard University. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Economics in 2014. My research tries to bring insights from psychology to bear on topics in economics, particularly topics relevant to developing countries. Recent projects include studying how improving sleep affects the economic outcomes of workers in India, how the endowment effect influences consumer demand for collateralized loans in Kenya, how research findings affect the beliefs and policy choices of mayors in Brazil, and how mixing rich and poor students in schools in India affects social preferences and behaviors.
Online speakers:
1. Glenn Loury, Brown University - March 25th, 5-6 pm
Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. As an academic economist, Professor Loury has published mainly in the areas of applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of race and inequality. He has been elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society, Member of the American Philosophical Society, Vice President of the American Economics Association, and President of the Eastern Economics Association. In 2005 he won the John von Neumann Award (given annually by the Rajk László College of the Budapest University of Economic Science and Public Administration to "an outstanding economist whose research has exerted a major influence on students of the College over an extended period of time.") He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Scholarship to support his work. He has given the prestigious Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford (2007), the James A. Moffett ’29 Lectures in Ethics at Princeton (2003), and the DuBois Lectures in African American Studies at Harvard (2000.)
2. Kristen Broady, Chicago Fed - TBD
Dr. Kristen Broady is a Fellow at Brookings Metro. She is a Professor of Financial Economics on leave at Dillard University in New Orleans. She previously served on the faculties of Howard University, Alabama A&M University, Dominican University, Fort Valley State University, and Kentucky State University and as a visiting faculty member at Jiangsu Normal University in Xuzhou, China during the summer of 2019. Dr. Broady served as a consultant for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.; a senior research fellow for the Center for Global Policy Solutions in Washington, D.C.; a consultant for the City of East Point, Georgia and as an HBCU consultant for season two of The Quad on Black Entertainment Television (BET) in Atlanta. Her areas of research include mortgage foreclosure risk, labor and automation, and racial health disparities. She earned a B.A. in criminal justice at Alcorn State University and an MBA and Ph.D. in business administration with a major in economics at Jackson State University.
For more information, contact: Nidhi Nair at nidhi.nair@uconn.edu