Edward Lazear


Edward Paul Lazear is an American economist, the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Davies Family Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Lazear served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2006 to 2009, replacing Ben Bernanke. As Chairman, he was the chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush holding a cabinet-level post as part of the White House team that led the response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Lazear has been called the founder of personnel economics a subfield of economics that applies economic models to the study of the management of human resources in the firm. His research advances new models of employee incentives, promotions, compensation and productivity in firms. He is also credited with developing a theory of entrepreneurship and leadership that emphasizes skill acquisition. In addition to personnel economics, Lazear is a labor economist known for his work on the educational production function, teaching to the test, and the importance of culture and language in explaining the rise of multiculturalism.

Early life and education

Born in 1948, Professor Lazear grew up in Brooklyn, New York before moving to Los Altos, California. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with AB and AM degrees in 1971. He received his doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1974.

Career

Edward Lazear is the Davies Family Professor of Economics at Stanford University since 2017 and Morris A. Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1985. Previously, he was the Jack Steele Parker Professor of Human Resources Management and Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Professor of Urban and Labor Economics of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics, the premier journal in labor economics, and the 15th ranked journal in economics. Lazear is also the founder of the Society of Labor Economists.
Amongst various other appointments, Lazear also serves as a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute for the Study of Labor, the Center for Corporate Performance at the Copenhagen Business School, and SIEPR. Professor Lazear has also been a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1974. Lazear is a past visiting professor at the Institutes for Advanced Study in Vienna and Jerusalem, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, and the Center for the Study of New Institutional Economics at the University of the Saarland in Germany. He has lectured by invitation at other premier institutions worldwide, including Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, England, Spain, Australia, and India. A frequent keynote speaker, he was the Astra-Erikkson Lecturer and the 1993 Wicksell Lecturer in Stockholm, Sweden.
Since leaving his post as Chairman of the Bush Council of Economic Advisors, Lazear makes regular appearances on CNBC and Fox Business News. He is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.

Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and the Financial Crisis

Professor Lazear served as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Financial Crisis and through the Great Recession of 2007-2009. As the chief economic advisor to President Bush, he joined the White House economic team that orchestrated the policy response to the financial crisis and that restructured the financial system. Lazear’s team developed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 which provided the first rounds of economic stimuli intended to boost the United States economy in the face of unprecedented shocks to the financial and housing sectors. The bill was implemented rapidly: passing the U.S House of Representatives on January 29, 2008, and then the U.S Senate on February 7, 2008, to be signed into law on February 13, 2008 by President Bush with bi-partisan support.
Prior to serving as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Lazear was a member of President Bush’s President's Advisory Panel for Federal Tax Reform, established in 2005. Lazear worked with nine other members on revenue-neutral policy options for reforming the Federal Internal Revenue Code.

Awards and recognition

Lazear has won a number of awards over his career. Among those that he has won are:
His book, Personnel Economics was selected as a MIT Press Outstanding Book in 1996, and as one of the ten most important books in Labor Economics by Princeton in 1996. Professor Lazear has also received honorary degrees from Albertson College of Idaho, Aarhus School of Business, the University of Zurich, and Copenhagen Business School. Lazear is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Econometric Society, and the Society of Labor Economists. He has also been the recipient of numerous National Science Foundation grants.

Personal life

Lazear is married and has one daughter. Lazear enjoys outdoor activities in his spare time, and is an avid skier and mountain biker.

Publications

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;Articles