Lawrence Summers & R. Glenn Hubbard

The New York Times has asked: "Who has the better ideas: Larry Summers, who helped design U.S. economic policy under two Democratic presidents, or Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush’s tax-cutting guru?"

Larry Summers is an expert on domestic economics and a leading authority on international finance. A distinguished voice on issues and policy, Larry’s commentary is regarded as essential input to crafting economic policy. Having served as Director of the White House Economic Council and the Secretary of the Treasury, Summers has remained for decades a well-respected statesman of the American economy.

Renowned economist and executive economic advisor Dr. R. Glenn Hubbard is a highly sought-after voice on economic policy, especially as it relates to turmoil with shifting relationships between global power players. Dr. Hubbard has devoted his career to the thorough analysis of American fiscal policy, both in the public sector and as Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business (2014-2019), where he remains a lecturer. Combining decades of experience with lauded academic research, Professor Hubbard gives a robust and stimulating look at the top economic issues – and their future.

Economic policy experts from two schools of thought, Lawrence Summers and R. Glenn Hubbard work to break down today’s markets with weight, nuance, and authority.

 

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Lawrence  Summers headshot

Lawrence Summers

EXCLUSIVE NEW
  • Economic & Financial Thought Leader
  • President, Harvard University (2001-2006)
  • Director, White House National Economic Council (2009-2010)
  • Secretary of the Treasury (1999-2001)

An expert on domestic economics and a leading authority on international finance, Larry Summers is one of the most distinguished voices on the issues and policy impacting the global economy. His frequent commentary is regarded as essential input to crafting economic policy, and he has remained for decades a well respected statesman of the American economy.

Prior to serving in the Obama Administration as Director of the National Economic Council, Dr. Summers was 71st Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration, President of Harvard University, and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank. Dr. Summers’ tenure at the U.S. Treasury coincided with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history. He is the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus. During his tenure in the Obama Administration, Larry Summers emerged as a key economic decision-maker and continues to be called upon as the number one resource for the most pressing economic debates of the day. 

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R. Glenn Hubbard headshot

R. Glenn Hubbard

EXCLUSIVE NEW
  • Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors (2001-2003)
  • Co-Chair of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation
  • Dean Emeritus, Columbia Business School
  • Leading Economic Commentator & Policy Advisor

An economic advisor to Presidents, a well-respected Professor, leading Republican economist R. Glenn Hubbard has been the architect of policies that affect millions. Event planners invite Hubbard to speak at their events not only to offer their audiences shrewd economic commentary but also to ensure their program maintains the gravitas they've worked so hard to cultivate. Hubbard is that rare economic policy speaker who entertains as he delivers a complex message clearly and concisely - the same skills which have made him a familiar face on political and economic television news programs.

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Biography

Lawrence Summers's Biography

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of  the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr. Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Dr. Summers’ tenure at the U.S. Treasury coincided with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history. He is the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus. Dr. Summers has played a key role in addressing the major financial crisis for the last three decades.

During the 1990s, he was a leader in crafting the U.S. response to international financial crises arising in Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Japan, and Asian emerging markets. As one of President Obama’s chief economic advisors, Dr. Summers’ thinking helped shape the U.S. response to the 2008 financial crisis, to the failure of the automobile industry, and to the pressures on the European monetary system. Upon Summers’ departure from the White House, President Obama said, “I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.” The Economist recognized his influence when it defined the “Summers Doctrine,” an approach to economic policy during financial crises that fuses a microeconomic “laissez faire” mentality with macroeconomic activism. “Markets should allocate capital, labour and ideas without interference, but sometimes markets go haywire, and must be counteracted forcefully by government.”

Summers’ five years as President of Harvard represented a time of major innovation for the University. He focused on equality of opportunity and removing all financial obligation from students with family incomes below $60,000 a year. He launched a major effort to make Boston, and Cambridge in particular, the global leader in life sciences research, with the formation of major programs for stem cell research and genomics. Perhaps most importantly, he led efforts to renew Harvard College with dramatic increases in study abroad programs, faculty-student contact, and collaboration across the University during his tenure.

Currently, Dr. Summers is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, where he became a full professor at age 28, one of the youngest in Harvard’s recent history. He directs the University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Summers was the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation’s Alan Waterman Award for scientific achievement and, in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the most outstanding economist under 40 in the United States. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. He has published more than 150 papers in scholarly journals.

Summers chairs the board of the Center for Global Development and serves as vice chair of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and as a board member or advisory board member to a number of other non-profits and public policy organizations. He is a contributor to Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. He is an advisor to businesses and investors and serves on the board of Square, States Title/Doma and SkillSoft Corporation. He also consults with or advises a range of companies in the finance and technology sector, including D. E. Shaw & Co and Citi.

He has co-chaired major international panels ranging from the G20s High Level Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response to the Council on Foreign Relations study group on the Transatlantic Relationship to the Center for American Progress’ Commission on Inclusive Prosperity. He launched a Task Force on Fiscal Policy with Mayor Bloomberg and chaired the Commission on Global Health, lauded by the UN Secretary General who noted that it “will bring more than health – it will bring equity, and contribute to a life of dignity for all.”

President Bill Clinton said that Larry Summers “has the rare ability to see the world that is taking shape and the skill to help to bring it into being.” He has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential thinkers by Time, Foreign Policy, Prospect and The Economist magazines among many others. In his speeches, television appearances, newspaper columns and public commentary, he continues to move forward the debate on national and global economic policy.

R. Glenn Hubbard's Biography

Glenn Hubbard is Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School.. Hubbard received his BA and BS degrees summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida and also holds AM and PhD degrees in economics from Harvard University.

In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles in economics and finance, Glenn is the author of three popular textbooks, as well as co-author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty; Balance: The Economics of Great Powers From Ancient Rome to Modern America; and Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System. His commentaries appear in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, Nikkei, and the Daily Yomiuri, as well as on television and radio.

From 2001 until 2003, he was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. In the corporate sector, he is on the boards of ADP, BlackRock, and MetLife.

Hubbard is co-chair of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation; he is a past chair of the Economic Club of New York and a past co-chair of the Study Group on Corporate Boards.