Economics Lecture Series 

For more information about the lectures, contact Mehdi Haririan, professor of economics, at 570-389-4682.

John Campbell, Harvard University 
'Consumer Financial Protection' 

Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2 p.m.
Webinar: https://commonwealthu-edu.zoom.us/j/96859501968 [commonwealthu-edu.zoom.us] Webinar ID: 968 5950

Harvard University professor Dr. John Campbell will speak for Commonwealth University’s Fall 2023 Economic Lecture Series. Campbell will speak in a webinar on Wednesday, Nov. 1, at 2 p.m. about “Consumer Financial Protection.” The lecture, accessible through the web page www.bloomu.edu/economics-lectures, is open to the public. 

Dr. Campbell is the Morton L. and Carole S. Olshan Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Since joining Harvard in 1994, Campbell has published over 100 articles on various aspects of finance and macroeconomics, including fixed-income securities, equity valuation, portfolio choice, and household finance. 

His books include Financial Decisions and Markets: A Course in Asset Pricing (Princeton University Press 2018), The Squam Lake Report: Fixing the Financial System (with the Squam Lake Group of financial economists, PUP 2010), Strategic Asset Allocation: Portfolio Choice for Long-Term Investors (with Luis Viceira, Oxford University Press 2002), and The Econometrics of Financial Markets (with Andrew Lo and Craig MacKinlay, PUP 1997).

He is a Research Associate and former Director of the Program in Asset Pricing at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, and served as President of the American Finance Association in 2005. Campbell holds honorary doctorates from BI Norwegian Business School, the University of Maastricht, the University of Paris Dauphine, and Copenhagen Business School. Campbell is also a founding partner of Arrowstreet Capital, LP, a Boston-based quantitative asset management firm. 

CANCELLED
David Laibson, Harvard University 
'Self-Control, Present Bias, and Behavior Change'

Thursday, Nov. 2,

Harvard University professor Dr. David Laibson will speak for Commonwealth University’s Fall 2023 Economic Lecture Series. Laibson will speak on Thursday, Nov. 2, at 2 p.m. at Haas Center of Performing Arts, Mitrani Hall, about “Self-Control, Present Bias, and Behavior Change.” The lecture is open to the public.

Dr. Laibson is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics and a Faculty Dean of Lowell House. He leads Harvard University's Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative. His research focuses on the topic of behavioral economics, with emphasis on self-regulation, behavior change, and household finance. He teaches courses on microeconomics, macroeconomics, and economic theory. 

Laibson is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he directs the National Institute of Aging Roybal Center for Behavior Change in Health and Savings. He also serves on Harvard’s Pension Investment Committee, the Board of the Russell Sage Foundation as the finance committee chair, and the Consumer Finance Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Academic Research Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In the past, he has served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

He is a two-time recipient of the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security. In recognition of his teaching, Laibson also has been awarded Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Prize and a Harvard College Professorship. He holds degrees from Harvard University (A.B. Economics, summa cum laude), the London School of Economic (M.Sc. in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D. in Economics)

Lars Hansen , University of Chicago 
'Uncertainty Spillovers for Markets and Policy'

Tuesday, April 2, 2 p.m., Haas Center for the Arts, Mitrani Hall
Livestream:
https://cupmediasite.passhe.edu/Mediasite/Play/f94bb5a2a3134654acc6fc32aecd8bfa1d

Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Lars Hansen will speak for Commonwealth University’s Fall 2023 Economic Lecture Series. Hansen will speak on Tuesday, April 2, at 2 p.m. at Haas Center of Performing Arts, Mitrani Hall, about “Uncertainty Spillovers for Markets and Policy.” The lecture is open to the public. 

Dr. Hansen is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor and the Director of BFI’s Macro Finance Research Program at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on time series econometrics, asset pricing, and macroeconomics. He also remains actively involved in the Ph.D. program in financial economics, a joint program with the University of Chicago School of Business that he helped establish. He is the leading expert in economic dynamics who works at the forefront of economic thinking and modeling, drawing approaches from macroeconomics, finance, and statistics. He is the recipient of the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. 

His recent work focuses on uncertainty and its relationship to long-run risks in the macroeconomy. He explores how models that incorporate ambiguities, beliefs, and skepticism of consumers and investors can explain economic and financial data and reveal the long-term consequences of policy options. Hansen, Thomas J. Sargent, and their coauthors have recently developed methods for modeling economic decision-making in environments in which uncertainty is hard to quantify. They explore the consequences for models with financial markets and characterize environments in which the beliefs of economic actors are fragile.