Biography
Michael Spence has served as the Chairman of an Independent Commission on Growth and Development, with a focus on growth in emerging economies (2006 to 2010). He is Professor of Economics in the Stern of Business at New York University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. In 2001, Spence received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for work on markets with incomplete and asymmetric information. Mr. Spence serves on the boards of Genpact and Merca-dolibre, and a number of private companies. He is a member of the board of the Stanford Management Company, and the International Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation. He is a Senior Advisor to Oak Hill Investment Management and a consultant to PIMCO. Mr. Spence was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching and the John Bates Clark medal, awarded to economists under 40 years of age for a “significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.” He served as dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999. From 1984 to 1990, Spence served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, overseeing Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education. Mr. Spence earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Princeton summa cum laude and was selected for a Rhodes Scholarship. He was awarded a B.S.-M.A. from Oxford in mathematics and earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard. He lives in Milan and New York with his wife and two younger children. He writes regularly on emerging market and global economy issues for leading publications and for Project Syndicate.
Spence was previously a member of the 21st Century Council, Council for the Future of Europe, and The WorldPost Advisory Council.