NOBEL PRIZE WINNING ECONOMIST
AND INFLUENTIAL “NEW YORK TIMES” COLUMNIST

NYS Writers Institute, October 9, 2009
8:00 p.m. Reading/Discussion | Page Hall, 135 Western Ave., Downtown Campus

CALENDAR LISTING:
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist for 2009 and author of an influential “New York Times” op-ed column, will speak as part of UAlbany’s Homecoming, Family and Reunion Weekend on Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. in Page Hall on the University at Albany’s downtown campus. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and UAlbany’s School of Business.

PROFILE
Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, and the author of a twice-weekly op-ed column in the “New York Times,” has been called “the most important political columnist in America” (“Washington Monthly”), and “the most celebrated economist of his generation” (“The Economist”). Krugman has also earned a measure of celebrity as an outspoken and thoughtful critic of the economic policies of both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidential administrations.

A Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, Krugman is the bestselling author or editor of 25 books on economics for both general and academic audiences.

His most recent book is “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008” (2008), a substantially updated and expanded edition of an earlier book on the same subject published in 1999. Widely regarded as a prescient analysis of unregulated bubble behavior in financial markets, the original book presented the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the Latin American financial crisis of 1998 as cautionary tales for the future of world markets. The updated edition demonstrates how the failure of market regulation permitted a similar, but much larger crisis to occur here in the United States and in the world at large. Krugman also offers a prescription for containing the crisis and preventing economic disaster.

Critics around the globe have hailed the book for its explication of complex ideas in simple, fun-to-read and often humorous terms. In a review of the updated edition that appeared in “The Nation,” Bernard Avishai said, “We’ve heard Santayana’s aphorism [about ‘forgetting  history’], and many have been condemned to repeat it. But there are things to learn also from the present. And we count on nobody more than Paul Krugman to teach us about that.”

Recent bestsellers by Krugman have included “The Conscience of a Liberal” (October 2007), “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century” (2003), and “Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan” (2001). In a review of “The Conscience of a Liberal” that appeared in the “New York Review of Books,” Michael Tomasky called Krugman, “The most consistent and courageous — and unapologetic — liberal partisan in American journalism.” In advance praise of “The Great Unraveling,” a collection of Krugman’s columns from the “Times,” commentator Anthony Lewis said, “Paul Krugman is the indispensable American columnist, a voice of truth in a political world of lies and calculated injustice.”

Krugman received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to international trade theory, specifically the dynamics of trade between industrialized countries which, he argues, is driven by consumer preference for a diverse choice of brands, and by the benefits derived by producers from ever-expanding “economies of scale.” Krugman first began to articulate these ideas in a 1979 paper that was published in the “Journal of International Economics.”

Krugman credits Isaac Asimov’s science fiction work, “The Foundation Trilogy,” which he read as a teenager, with helping to inspire his interest in economics and the social sciences.

In addition to his twice-weekly Op-Ed column which has appeared in the “New York Times” for a decade, Krugman posts almost daily on his “New York Times” blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/.