Keynote Speakers
During the conference, you can look forward to two keynote lectures featuring prominent scholars and practitioners in economics.
The keynote speakers you’ll hear range from Nobel Laureates to members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, providing you with invaluable insights into economics.
2026 Keynote speakers
Alan Blinder
Alan Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Blinder served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from June 1994 until January 1996. Before becoming a member of the Board, Dr. Blinder served as a Member of President Clinton’s original Council of Economic Advisers from January 1993 until June 1994.
Dr. Blinder has taught at Princeton since 1971 and chaired the Department of Economics from 1988 to 1990. He was the Founder and either the Director or Co-Director of Princeton’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies from 1989 to 2011.
Dr. Blinder is the author or co-author of 23 books, including the textbook Economics: Principles and Policy (now with the late William Baumol and John Solow), which is now in its 14th edition, and from which over three million college students have learned introductory economics. His best-selling book, After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead (2013), won several awards. Advice and Dissent: Why America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide (2018) was published by Basic Books. His latest book, A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021, was published by Princeton University Press in October 2022.
Dr. Blinder was born on October 14, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his A.B. at Princeton University in 1967, M.Sc. at the London School of Economics in 1968, and Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971—all in economics. He and his wife, Madeline, live in Princeton, NJ. They have two sons and four grandchildren.
Rachel Glennerster
Rachel Glennerster is the president of the Center for Global Development and a trustee on the Center for Global Development Europe’s board of trustees. Prior to joining CGD, she was at the University of Chicago. She has leveraged randomized trials to address critical issues spanning democracy, health, education, and women’s empowerment and pioneered ways to shape markets to promote innovation to address global challenges, including pandemics and climate change. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to the Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics.
Dr. Glennerster previously served as Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for International Development in the UK. From 2004 to 2017, she served as Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a center in the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by scientific evidence and helped pioneer the use of randomized trials in development economics.
Dr. Glennerster helped to establish “Deworm the World”, which has helped provide 1 billion deworming treatments to children worldwide, and played a pivotal role in establishing initiatives, including the $1.2 billion Advance Market Commitment for a pneumococcal vaccine and the interdisciplinary Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel that provides advice to governments about the most effective education strategies.
In 2021, Dr. Glennerster was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services in international development. She also currently serves as the Chair of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (TaRL Africa).
Past keynote speakers
2025: Professor John Donohue
2025: Beth Anne Wilson
2024: Olivier Blanchard
2024: Wendy Edelberg
2023: Lisa D. Cook
2023: Signe-Mary McKernan
2022: Joshua Angrist
2022: Kenneth Rogoff
2021: Paul Romer
2021: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
2019: Melissa S. Kearney
2019: Hunt Allcott
2018: Augusto Lopez-Claros
2018: George Akerlof
2017: Jason Furman
2017: Nobuhiro Kiyotaki
2016: Professor Rodney Ludema
2016: Daniel Kaufman
2015: Dr. Rajiv Shah
2015: George Akerlof
2014: Peter Diamond
2014: Martin Ravallion
2013: John B. Taylor
2013: Janet M. Currie
2012: Jonathan Levin
2011: Joseph Stiglitz
2011: Jagdish Bhagwati
2010 & 2008: Philip I. Levy
2010: Robert C. Merton
2010: Lant Pritchett
2009: Eric S. Maskin
2009: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2008: Susan C. Athey
2008: Steven Radelet
2007: Grant D. Aldonas
2007: François Bourguignon
2006: Thomas C. Schelling
2006: Kemal Derviş
2005 & 2002: Edwin M. Truman
2005: William Easterly
2005: Maurice Obstfeld
2004: John F. Nash, JR.
2004: Peter R. Orszag
2003 & 2002: John Williamson
2003: R. Glenn Hubbard
2002: Lawrence B. Lindseyrence B. Lindsey