[Sci-tech-public] FW: Dec 2: Science and Democracy Lecture Series with Raghuram Rajan

[Bianca Singletary]

Science and Democracy, a lecture series aimed at exploring both the promised
benefits or our era's most salient scientific and technological
breakthroughs and the potentially harmful consequences of developments that
are inadequately understood, debated, or managed by politicians, lay
publics, and policy institutions.

Raghuram Rajan
Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, the University
of Chicago Booth School of Business

"Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy"

Panelists
Suzanne Berger, Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political
Science, MIT

Frank Dobbin, Professor of Sociology, Harvard

Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History and William Ziegler
Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School


Moderated by
Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies,
Harvard Kennedy School

Wednesday, December 2
5:00 - 7:00p

Piper Auditorium
Gund Hall, GSD
48 Quincy Street
Harvard University

As the world struggles to recover from the economic crisis of 2008, it is
tempting to blame the events on a few greedy bankers who took irrational
risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues
that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a
potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they are not fixed. He
traces the deepening fault lines in a system overly dependent on American
consumption to power the world economy and stave off a global downturn; a
system where America's thin social safety net has created tremendous
political pressure to keep job creation robust, because jobs are the primary
provider of health and other benefits; and where the U.S. financial sector,
with its skewed incentives, is the critical but unstable link between an
overstimulated America and an underconsuming world.  In conclusion, he
outlines sensible reforms to ensure a more stable world economy and to
restore lasting prosperity.

Raghuram Rajan is Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of
Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He served as
Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund between 2003 and 2006. He
as worked as a consultant for the Indian Finance Ministry, World Bank,
Federal Reserve Board, Swedish Parliamentary Commission, and various
financial institutions. Rajan is the author, along with fellow Chicago Booth
faculty member Luigi Zingales, of the book, Saving Capitalism from the
Capitalists. In 2003, he received the inaugural Fischer Black Prize, which
is awarded by the American Finance Association for the person under 40 who
has contributed the most to the theory and practice of finance. He received
his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institution of Technology in Delhi in
1985, and an MBA from the Indian Institution of Management in 1987. Rajan
received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991.


This event is organized by the Program on Science, Technology, and Society,
at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-sponsored by the School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences, the Graduate School of Design, the South Asia
Initiative at Harvard, and the Harvard University Center for the
Environment.  For more information on Science, Technology, and Society
events at Harvard University, please visit: www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/. This
lecture and panel is free and open to the public.


Contact:
Lisa Matthews
Events Coordinator
Harvard University Center for the Environment

24 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
lisa_matthews at harvard.edu
p. 617-495-8883
f. 617-496-0425



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