Brookings Inst. economist tackles Great Recession, policy in Sichel talk

KALAMAZOO—An economist from The Brookings Institution will take a closer look at the Great Recession and policymaking this month when he visits Western Michigan University as part of the 2014-15 Werner Sichel Lecture Series.

Gary Burtless, Whitehead Chair in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will speak at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, in Room 2028 of Brown Hall. His presentation is free and open to the public and is titled "Lessons of the Great Recession for Economic Policymaking."

Gary Burtless

Burtless does research on issues connected with poverty and income distribution, public finance, aging, labor markets, social insurance and the behavioral effects of government tax and transfer policy. In recent work, he has assessed the impact of the 2008-10 stimulus programs on U.S. social protection and the economy, evaluated the implications of financial market fluctuations for the design of optimal pension systems, estimated the impact of public and private health insurance on the distribution of American household incomes and analyzed the growing disparity in expected life spans among Americans with low and high incomes.

Burtless has published numerous research articles, appearing in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review and The Tax Journal. He is the coauthor of four books, including "Globaphobia: Confronting Fears about Open Trade" and "Growth with Equity: Economic Policymaking for the Next Century." Burtless was also the editor and contributor to six books, including "A Future of Lousy Jobs? The Changing Structure of U.S. Wages" and, most recently, "Closing the Deficit: How Much Can Later Retirement Help?"

Burtless has a doctoral degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has served as co-editor of the Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs and as associate editor of the Journal of Human Resources.

Upcoming Sichel presentations

This year's Sichel Series carries the theme "Lessons from the Great Recession" and features leading economists from across the country. Other dates, presenters and topics in this year's series are:

• Feb. 18: Dr. Donald Kohn, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a 40-year veteran of the Federal Reserve System, "Central Banking in the Great Recession."

• March 4: Dr. Kathryn Dominguez, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, "International Dimensions of the Great Recession and the Weak Recovery."

• March 25: Dr. Barry Eichengreen, the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and professor of political science at the University of California-Berkeley, "Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession and the Uses and Misuses of History."

• April 8: Dr. Till von Wachter, associate professor of economics at the University of California-Los Angeles, "Cleansing Effects from the Great Recession."

About the series

The Sichel Series is organized by the WMU Department of Economics and named in honor of Werner Sichel, a longtime WMU economics professor and former department chair, who retired in 2004. The series is annually cosponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. The lectures are open to the public and formatted with the general public in mind.

This year's series is being organized by Dr. Eskander Alvi, a WMU professor of economics. For more information, contact Alvi at (269) 387-5547 or eskander.alvi@wmich.edu.

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