William Easterly, a longtime economist at the World Bank and an expert on the macroeconomics of developing countries, will deliver the 43rd annual Gilbert Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, in room 318/418 of Gleason Hall on the University of Rochester's River Campus.
Easterly's research and analysis of foreign aid, indebted countries, and a host of issues associated with economic development have yielded numerous articles in leading economics journals and general-interest publications. He is now professor of economics at New York University and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Global Development at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.
For the Gilbert Memorial Lecture, Easterly has titled his talk "Missionaries and Scientists in Economic Development." It is free and open to the public.
A specialist on Africa, Easterly has participated in dozens of conferences and seminars on development issues, and from 1985 to 2001 was an economist and senior advisor at the World Bank. He is the author of The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001), which is praised for its discussion of modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank, and co-editor of Public Sector Deficits and Macroeconomic Performance (1994). He also is editor of the BE Press Journals in Economics and Growth of Developing Areas and associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics.
The Gilbert Memorial Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the Department of Economics at the University of Rochester, was established in 1959 in memory of Donald W. Gilbert, professor of economics, vice president for University development, and provost at the University. A central idea for the series is to illuminate the practical side of economics and to show the role of economics in contemporary policy debates.