Michael Spence

Michael Spence received his Princeton undergraduate degree in philosophy and was selected for a Rhodes Scholarship. He holds a BA/MA from Oxford University and a PhD from Harvard. While teaching at Harvard, he received the John Kenneth Galbraith Award for teaching excellence at that institution. He taught at Stanford as Associate Professor of Economics from 1973 to 1975.  He was then Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University from 1975 to 1990. Before finally returning to Stanford, Spence served as Dean of Harvard's School of Arts and Science. He then served as dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999. As Dean, he oversaw the school's finances, organization and educational policies. At the same time, from 1977 to 1979, he was a member of the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee on Economics and, in 1979, a member of the Sloan Foundation's Advisory Committee on Economics. He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Economics Review, the Bell Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Theory. He also chaired the Independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006-2010). Michael Spence is a member of the boards of General Mills and a number of private companies. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001 and the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal in 1981.