Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama administration is this year’s Veblen-Clark Lecturer!
April 23, 2025, 4-5pm, Weitz 236 – “Uncertainty and the Macroeconomy: Lessons from the Great Depression for Today” by Dr. Christina Romer
Dr. Romer is Professor of Graduate School and Garff B. Wilson Professor Emerita of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
In her lecture, Dr. Romer will discuss how tariffs, stock market plunges, and government layoffs are generating great uncertainty about economic policy and the economic outlook. What are the likely effects of this surge in uncertainty? The experience of the U.S, following the Great Crash of the stock market in 1929 may provide some clues. Are there reasons to expect different outcomes today?
Dr. Romer joined the Berkeley faculty in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 1993. Prior to her appointment at Berkeley, she was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1985-1988. She received her Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1985.
Professor Romer is a former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama administration, vice president of the American Economic Association, co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship recipient, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a winner of the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, and a winner of the Council for Economic Education’s Visionary Award.
History of the Veblen-Clark Lecture Series
The Veblen-Clark series was established in 1985 to honor the memory of the two most illustrious economists ever to be associated with Carleton College.
Thorstein Veblen, born in 1857, spent much of his youth on a farm in Nerstrand, Minnesota, just 10 miles south of Northfield. Veblen graduated from Carleton with a bachelor of arts degree in 1880. He went on to earn a PhD at Yale University.
John Bates Clark, a young economist, joined Carleton’s faculty at the time of Veblen’s matriculation. Clark had been educated at Amherst College and at the University of Heidelberg. He was hired as both Professor of Political Economy and History and College Librarian. He remained at the college until 1881.
While Veblen and Clark had a mutual respect for each other’s intellect, they held dramatically divergent views regarding human behavior, social science, and economics. Each would leave Carleton to establish trails in economic theory which would be heavily followed but leading in markedly different directions.
After leaving Carleton, Clark went on to teaching positions at Smith College, Amherst College, Johns Hopkins University, and Columbia University. He was one of the pioneers of the use of marginal analysis to understand issues of resource allocation and income distribution. Among his most important contributions are The Philosophy of Wealth (1886) and The Distribution of Wealth (1899). He is considered to be one of the true founders of modern mainstream economics. The John Bates Clark medal is the highest honor awarded by the American Economics Association.
Veblen, on the other hand, forcefully challenged the foundations of mainstream economic theory. After experiencing some difficulty in landing a teaching position, Veblen’s brilliance finally overcame a variety of quirky personality traits. He obtained teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the University of Missouri. His most influential work is The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), in which fundamental economic paradigms are called into question.
The Veblen-Clark Lectureship brings an outstanding scholar in economics to Carleton each year for a public lecture and meetings with students and faculty. The lectureship presumes no ideological bias, but celebrates the variety of viewpoints and paradigms demonstrated by Veblen and Clark that have historically enriched the study of economics at Carleton.
The lectureship is made possible, in part, by the Ada Harrison Fund. The fund was established to honor Professor Ada Harrison, who taught in the economics department for many years and exemplified the department’s continuing commitment to teaching excellence.
Previous Veblen-Clark Lecturers
- 2024 Thomas J. Sargent, William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business, NYU and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Sources of Artificial Intelligence
- 2023 Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, The Ford School, University of Michigan, Women, Work, and Families: How the March Toward Gender Equality in the Workforce and at Home was Impacted by the Pandemic
- 2022 William (Sandy) Darity, Jr., From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
- 2020 Tim Leunig, Professor, London School of Economics and Economic Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer
- 2019 Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago
- 2018 Arthur Rolnick, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
- 2017 Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 2016 Martha Paas, Carleton College
- 2015 Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University
- 2013 Ben Broadbent, Bank of England, Monetary Policy Committee
- 2012 Gary Libecap, University of California at Santa Barbara
- 2011 Gavin Wright, Stanford University
- 2010 Margaret Simms, ’67, Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute
- 2009 Gregory Clark, University of California at Davis
- 2008 Thomas Schelling, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government
- 2007 Benjamin M. Friedman, Harvard University
- 2005 Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University
- 2004 Charles R. Plott, California Institute of Technology
- 2003 Robert E. Lucas Jr., University of Chicago
- 2002 Robert Fogel, University of Chicago
- 2001 Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University
- 2000 Anne O. Krueger, Stanford University
- 1999 Lester Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 1998 Gavin Wright, Stanford University
- 1997 Douglass C. North, Washington University
- 1996 Harry Markowitz, University of California at San Diego
- 1996 Pu Shan, Chinese Society of World Economy
- 1994 Robert E. Will, Carleton College
- 1993 Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University
- 1992 James Tobin, Yale University
- 1991 Robert Solow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 1990 Gary Becker, University of Chicago
- 1989 George Stigler, University of Chicago
- 1988 Michael Piore, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 1986 Roger Noll, Stanford University
- 1985 Robert Clower, University of California Los Angeles