The Future of Economic Policy Making: Lessons from the Fed and Presidential Advising

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, Noon–1 P.M.

Sebastian Mallaby discussed his new book – The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, FT & McKinsey’s Business Book of the Year – with Randall Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics and former Fed Governor and CEA member, in a fireside chat.

This was a joint event with the Fama-Miller Center.

Speaker Profiles


Sebastian Mallaby is Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mallaby is also a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, where he previously served as a staff columnist and editorial board member. His interests cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues, including central banks, financial markets, the implications of the rise of newly emerging powers, and the intersection of economics and international relations. His writing has also appeared in the Atlantic and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor.

Mallaby is the author of The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, released in October 2016 following five years of research and unlimited access to the former Federal Reserve chairman. His previous book, More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, was described by New York Times columnist David Brooks as "superb"; it was the recipient of the 2011 Loeb Prize, a finalist in the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs prize, and a New York Times bestseller. Mallaby's earlier books are The World's Banker, a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn that was named as an "Editor's Choice" by the New York Times; and After Apartheid, which was named by the New York Times as a "Notable Book." An essay in the Financial Times said of The World's Banker, "Mallaby's book may well be the most hilarious depiction of a big organization and its controversial boss since Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker."

Before joining the Washington Post in 1999, Mallaby spent thirteen years with the Economist. While at the Economist, he worked in London, where he wrote about foreign policy and international finance; in Africa, where he covered Nelson Mandela's release and the collapse of apartheid; and in Japan, where he covered the breakdown of the country's political and economic consensus. Between 1997 and 1999, Mallaby was the Economist's Washington bureau chief and wrote the magazine's weekly Lexington column on American politics and foreign policy. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist: once for editorials on Darfur and once for a series on economic inequality. In 2015, he helped to found a startup, InFacts.org, a web publication making the fact-based case for Britain to remain in the European Union.

Mallaby was educated at Oxford, graduating in 1986 with a first class degree in modern history. After eighteen years in Washington, DC, he moved to London in 2014, where he lives with his wife, Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of the Economist.

Randall S. Kroszner served as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 until 2009. He chaired the committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Institutions and the committee on Consumer and Community Affairs. In these capacities, he took a leading role in developing responses to the financial crisis and in undertaking new initiatives to improve consumer protection and disclosure, including rules related to home mortgages and credit cards. He represented the Federal Reserve Board on the Financial Stability Forum (now called the Financial Stability Board), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the Central Bank Governors of the American Continent and was a director of NeighborWorks America. Dr. Kroszner chaired the working party of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), composed of deputy central bank governors and finance ministers, on Policies for the Promotion of Better International Payments Equilibrium. As a member of the Fed Board, he was also a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.

From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Kroszner was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). He was involved in formulating policy on a wide range of issues, including responses to corporate governance scandals, government-sponsored enterprise reform, pension reform, terrorism risk insurance, tax reform, currency crisis management, sovereign debt restructuring, the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international trade and development.

Since 1990, Dr. Kroszner has taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dr. Kroszner was Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. He served as editor of the Journal of Law & Economics and has been associate editor of a number of other academic and policy journals. He was a member of the board of directors at the National Association for Business Economics. Dr. Kroszner also was a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor. He is currently a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the Committee on Economic Statistics of the American Economics Association. He serves on the board of the Financial Management Association and of the Paulson Institute. He is the Booth Academic Director of the CEO Perspectives program.

Dr. Kroszner has been a visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the IMF, the Stockholm School of Economics, the Stockholm University, the Free University of Berlin, Germany, the London School of Economics, and the American Enterprise Institute. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School the Bertil Danielson Visiting Professor of Banking and Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, and the SK Chaired Visiting Professor at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

His research interests include regulation of financial institutions, international financial crises, the Great Depression, monetary economics, corporate governance, debt restructuring and bankruptcy, and political economy. His paper on managerial stock ownership (with Clifford Holderness and Dennis Sheehan) won the Brattle Prize for best corporate finance paper in the Journal of Finance. His book co-authored with Robert J. Shiller, Reforming U.S. Financial Markets: Reflections Before and Beyond Dodd-Frank (MIT Press) appeared on the Washington Post’s Book World political best sellers list.

Dr. Kroszner is a frequent commentator in the international media. He provides advice to financial institutions, government organizations, and central banks throughout the world. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the global financial system and is involved with Gates Foundation initiatives on promoting access to financial services for the poor in emerging market countries.

Dr. Kroszner received a Sc.B. (magna cum laude) in applied mathematics-economics (honors) from Brown University in 1984 and an M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990), both in economics, from Harvard University.