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Michael Spence    

Nobel Prize Winning Economist & Commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance

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," published by 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."

Speech Topics


China’s Future Growth Potential and Growth Patterns

China is a high middle income country. But that averages across considerable variation in incomes across and within regions. Some of the future growth potential lies in bringing the lower income up to tier one city levels. In addition, there is considerable potential to increase productivity across the economy as a second growth driver. That said, future growth rates at full potential will not be as high as those in the early 2000’s. The catch-up effect in terms of technology was powerful then. But China has dramatically closed the gap. I will then talk about some particularly high growth areas in the global economy and China’s participation in them.

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