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Michael Spence

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  • Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences
  • Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University
  • Author of 'The Next Convergence' and 'Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World'
  • Senior Fellow - Hoover Institution at Stanford & Distinguished Visiting Fellow - Council on Foreign Relations

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Michael Spence is a Nobel Prize–winning macroeconomist who helps leaders understand where the global economy is breaking and what comes next. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on information and markets, Spence has spent decades analyzing growth, structural change, and systemic risk across advanced and emerging economies. His work focuses on the forces now reshaping the global landscape, including productivity slowdowns, technological disruption, supply-chain realignment, inflation, and the future of globalization.

As a speaker, Spence brings clarity to moments of economic uncertainty. He explains how today’s shocks fit together, what policy choices actually matter, and how leaders should think about growth and risk in a fragmented world. Drawing on his role as a senior advisor to global investors and institutions, and on the framework outlined in Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, Spence helps audiences move beyond headlines toward a coherent view of the economic path ahead. His talks are sought out by organizations that need sober, credible insight when markets and geopolitics collide.

 


Michael Spence headshot
Past Hosts Include:
  • NYU Stern
  • International Summit of Cooperatives
  • Warwick Economics Summit
  • Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research
  • Zhejiang University - Global Lecture Series
  • Asia Global Institute
  • Talks at Google
  • Institute for New Economic Thinking
  • Commission on Growth and Development
  • Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School
Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World | Bloomberg Television - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Michael Spence
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Author Talk: ‘Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix our Fractured World’

In this talk inspired by his latest book Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, Nobel Laureate MICHAEL SPENCE offers an informed and enlightening plan to take on broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance. Spence focuses on solutions to the pervasive anxiety about the st ...

In this talk inspired by his latest book Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, Nobel Laureate MICHAEL SPENCE offers an informed and enlightening plan to take on broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance. Spence focuses on solutions to the pervasive anxiety about the state of the world – a cascade of crises including sputtering growth, surging inflation, poor policy responses, an escalating climate emergency, worsening inequality, increasing nationalism, and a decline in global co-operation. Co-authored with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian, the ideas in Permacrisis offer a better path forward to a brighter future.

Making Sense of a Fractured Global Economy

Nobel Laureate MICHAEL SPENCE explains why the global economy is no longer moving toward stability. He takes audiences inside the structural forces driving fragmentation, slower growth, and persistent volatility, and shows how leaders should interpret economic signals when traditional assumptions no ...

Nobel Laureate MICHAEL SPENCE explains why the global economy is no longer moving toward stability. He takes audiences inside the structural forces driving fragmentation, slower growth, and persistent volatility, and shows how leaders should interpret economic signals when traditional assumptions no longer hold.

Inflation, Policy, and the Limits of Control

Drawing on decades of policy and market analysis, MICHAEL SPENCE breaks down what central banks and governments can realistically influence in today’s environment. He explains where policy still matters, where expectations need to reset, and why many outcomes are now driven by structural forces rath ...

Drawing on decades of policy and market analysis, MICHAEL SPENCE breaks down what central banks and governments can realistically influence in today’s environment. He explains where policy still matters, where expectations need to reset, and why many outcomes are now driven by structural forces rather than short-term intervention.

Technology, AI, and the Next Growth Question

A leading voice on growth and technological change, MICHAEL SPENCE explains how artificial intelligence fits into the broader macroeconomic picture. He separates hype from impact, showing how technological change affects productivity and labor markets over time, and what leaders should watch as AI r ...

A leading voice on growth and technological change, MICHAEL SPENCE explains how artificial intelligence fits into the broader macroeconomic picture. He separates hype from impact, showing how technological change affects productivity and labor markets over time, and what leaders should watch as AI reshapes growth.

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Speaker News

Nobel Laureate Michael Spence takes on our broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance in ‘Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World’

Nobel Laureate and esteemed economist MICHAEL SPENCE takes on our broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance in Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World. Inspired by pandemic-era Zoom meetings, Spence with co-authors Gordon Brown and leading economist Mohamed El-Erian address the permacrisis facing the world today. Spence focuses on solutions to the pervasive anxiety about the state of the world – a cascade of crises including sputtering growth, surging inflation, poor policy responses, an escalating climate emergency, worsening inequality, increasing nationalism, and a decline in global co-operation. In Permacrisis and in informative and engaging events, Spence offers an explanation of where we’ve gone wrong, and shares a provocative, inspiring plan to do nothing less than change the world.

Michael Spence talks Permacrisis on Bloomberg >>

Michael Spence’s keynote at the World Economic Summit >>

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Books by Michael Spence
Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World

Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World

The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World

The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World

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Press & Media
The Governance Threat to Prosperity - Project Syndicate
AI and the Productivity Imperative - Project Syndicate
AI productivity can revise grim economic outlook - The Asset
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Ideas for the Meeting Planner
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Biography

Michael Spence 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. He is an Adjunct Professor at Bocconi University in Milan, and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford University. 

In 2001, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in the field of information economics.

He is the author of The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 10, 2011).

He is a Senior Advisor to Jasper Ridge Partners and a Senior Advisor to General Atlantic Partners, and chairs GA’s Global Growth Institute. He chairs the Advisory Board of the Asia Global Institute, and was the Chairman of The Independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006-2010). He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Luohan Academy in Hangzhou.  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. 

He was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching and the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to American economists under age 40 for a "significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."

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