Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, addressed graduates at the 47th commencement ceremony of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, The Early College on Saturday, May 21, 2016 at 11:00 a.m.
Dr. Krugman was the sole recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade theory. As one of the founders of the “New Trade Theory”—economic models that focus on the role of increasing returns to scale, among others—he was awarded the John Bates Clark medal by the American Economic Association in 1991, a biennial prize given to an economist under forty who has made a significant contribution to the field of economics. During the Reagan administration, he worked at the White House as the senior international economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
Dr. Krugman, who has long-standing ties to Simon's Rock and Great Barrington, said, “It’s a great privilege to speak here on this occasion. Simon’s Rock lets students—who are our future—get started on their own future early, and it’s a wonderful thing.”
“We at Simon’s Rock are honored to have a speaker of Dr. Krugman’s brilliance and integrity deliver the 2016 keynote address,” said Ian Bickford, provost and vice president of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. “He will be an inspiration to our graduates, a powerful group of independent thinkers in their own right.”
A Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, Dr. Krugman is also a centenary professor at the London School of Economics. Prior to his appointment at CUNY, he served at Princeton and on the faculty of MIT as a Ford International Professor of Economics. He also taught at Yale and Stanford Universities. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974, and his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1977.
Today's most widely read economist, he’s best known for his op-ed column in The New York Times. Touted as “the most important political columnist in America” by The Washington Monthly, he received the Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary in 2011. Before joining The New York Times in 1999, he was a columnist for Fortune Magazine and published articles in The New Republic, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and The New York Times Magazine. He was chosen as one of Bloomberg’s “10 Most Influential Thinkers” (2013), and Bloomberg’s “50 Most Influential People in Global Finance” (2011). He appeared on Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” list from 2009 to 2012. In addition to writing over 200 scholarly articles, Dr. Krugman has also written extensively for a broader audience—including editorials in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Slate, and Scientific American.
A prolific author, he received high praise for The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, and End This Depression Now, which both became New York Times bestsellers. He named his New York Times blog after one of his 23 books, The Conscience of a Liberal.
He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Group of Thirty. Dr. Krugman served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, as well as to a number of countries including Portugal and the Philippines.