- Michael Spence
Professor, New York University; 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Scholars
Michael Spence is a world authority on growth in developing countries and on
the convergence between advanced and developing economies. He is the Philip H.
Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at
Stanford University, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a
Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. In September
2010, he became Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New
York University. In 2001, Mike received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for
his path breaking work in the field of information economics.
Mike served on the Board of Directors of MercadoLibre, Inc. and a number of
private companies, and formerly served on the Boards of Bank of America, General
Mills, Genpact Ltd., Nike, Siebel Systems and Sun Microsystems. He was a member
of the Board of the Stanford Management Company, which manages the Stanford
University endowment, and the International Chamber of Commerce Research
Foundation. He is a Senior Advisor to Jasper Ridge Partners and a consultant to
PIMCO. Mike co-chairs (with Dr. Victor Fung) the Advisory Council of the Asia
Global Institute, and was the Chairman of The Independent Commission on Growth
and Development (2006-2010). He served as Dean of the Stanford Business School
from 1990 to 1999 and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard
University from 1984 to 1990.
Mike earned his undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Princeton summa cum
laude, and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, where he earned an MA in
Mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard. Mike taught at
Stanford as an Associate Professor of Economics from 1973 to 1975. From 1975 to
1990, he served as Professor of Economics and Business Administration at
Harvard, holding a joint appointment in the Business School and the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences. In 1983 he was named Chairman of the Economics Department and
George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration. Mike was awarded
the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching and the John Bates
Clark Medal for a "significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."
The Clark Medal was awarded, at that time, every two years to an Economist under
the age of 40.
