Lester Carl Thurow (born 1938) is a former dean of the
MIT Sloan School of ManagementThe MIT Sloan School of Management is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States...
and author of numerous bestsellers on economic topics.
Thurow was born in
Livingston, MontanaLivingston is a city in and the county seat of Park County, Montana, United States. The population was 6,851 at the 2000 census. Livingston is located in southwestern Montana, on the Yellowstone River, north of Yellowstone National Park.-History:...
. He received his
B.A.Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
in
political economyPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
from
Williams CollegeWilliams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts.Williams was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams as a men's college, located in the Berkshires in northwestern Massachusetts, at the foot of Mount Greylock. In 1834, the first...
in 1960, where he was in
Theta Delta ChiTheta Delta Chi is a social fraternity that was founded in 1847 at Union College. While nicknames differ from institution to institution, the most common nicknames for the fraternity are Theta Delt, Thete, TDX, and TDC. Theta Delta Chi brothers refer to their local organization as Charges rather...
and Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, and a Tyng Scholar. Thurow was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and went to
Balliol CollegeBalliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England.Traditionally, the undergraduates are amongst the most politically active in the university, and the college's alumni include three former prime ministers. H. H...
,
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating in 1962 with first class honors.
Lester Carl Thurow (born 1938) is a former dean of the
MIT Sloan School of ManagementThe MIT Sloan School of Management is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States...
and author of numerous bestsellers on economic topics.
Thurow was born in
Livingston, MontanaLivingston is a city in and the county seat of Park County, Montana, United States. The population was 6,851 at the 2000 census. Livingston is located in southwestern Montana, on the Yellowstone River, north of Yellowstone National Park.-History:...
. He received his
B.A.Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
in
political economyPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
from
Williams CollegeWilliams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts.Williams was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams as a men's college, located in the Berkshires in northwestern Massachusetts, at the foot of Mount Greylock. In 1834, the first...
in 1960, where he was in
Theta Delta ChiTheta Delta Chi is a social fraternity that was founded in 1847 at Union College. While nicknames differ from institution to institution, the most common nicknames for the fraternity are Theta Delt, Thete, TDX, and TDC. Theta Delta Chi brothers refer to their local organization as Charges rather...
and Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, and a Tyng Scholar. Thurow was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and went to
Balliol CollegeBalliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England.Traditionally, the undergraduates are amongst the most politically active in the university, and the college's alumni include three former prime ministers. H. H...
,
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating in 1962 with first class honors. He received a Ph.D. in
EconomicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
from
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
in 1964.
Thurow is on the
board of directorsA board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. The body sometimes has a different name, such as board of trustees, board of governors, board of managers, or executive board...
of
Analog DevicesAnalog Devices, Inc. , is an American multinational semiconductor company specializing in data conversion and signal conditioning technology. Analog Devices serves over 60,000 customers representing a wide variety of electronic equipment types, including industrial and medical equipment, wireless...
, Grupo Casa Autrey, E-Trade, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.. Thurow was also one of the original founders of the
Economic Policy InstituteThe Economic Policy Institute is a US think tank. Economists who founded the nonprofit organization in 1986 included Jeff Faux,, Barry Bluestone, Robert Kuttner, Ray Marshall, Robert Reich, and Lester Thurow. The institute was the first organization to focus on the economic conditions of working...
in 1986.
Thurow is currently an
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
columnistA columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating copy that can sometimes be strongly opinionated. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs on the Internet....
for, among others, the
Boston Globe and
USA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth...
. He was previously an economics columnist for and on the editorial board of the
New York Times, and was a contributing editor to
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
.
Thurow is a longtime advocate of a political and economic system of the Japanese and European type, in which
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
al involvement in the direction of the economy is far more extensive than is presently the case in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
– a model that has come to be known as "
Third WayThe Third Way is a term that has been used to describe a political position which attempts to transcend left-wing and right-wing politics by advocating a mix of some left-wing and right-wing policies. Third Way approaches are commonly viewed as representing a centrist compromise between capitalism...
" philosophy. He has achieved some notoriety for books he wrote in the 1980s suggesting that the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, due to their command economy, posed a significant economic threat to the United States. In 1989, two years before the USSR imploded, he wrote, "Can economic command significantly... accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can... Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."
http://www.aei.org/include/pub_print.asp?pubID=8269
His best selling book,
Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America published in 1993, compares economic growth and living standards among Japan, Europe, and the USA.
His other books include:
- Fortune Favors the Bold: What we must do to build a new and lasting global prosperity (2003).
- The Future of Capitalism: how today's economic forces shape tomorrow's world (1996).
- The Zero-sum Solution: building a world-class American economy (1985).
- Dangerous Currents: the state of economics (1983).
- The Zero-sum Society: distribution and the possibilities for economic change (1980).
External links