Thursday, October 15, 1998

MEDIA ADVISORY: NOTE TO EDITORS

The lecture will be held on Thursday, October 22 at 4:30 pm. The symposium will follow on Friday, October 23 with registration at 8:30 am. Both events will be held in the Fleck Atrium at the Rotman School of Management, 105 St. George Street, Toronto. For further information please call 946-3818.

1993 NOBEL ECONOMICS LAUREATE DOUGLASS NORTH TO SPEAK AT ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT LECTURE TO BE FOLLOWED BY SYMPOSIUM ON GLOBALIZATION

TORONTO - Douglass North, the co-winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his work in economic history, will speak on "The Role of Institutions in Economic Growth" at the Rotman School of Management on Thursday, October 22 at 4:30 pm.

The lecture will be followed by a symposium on Friday, October 23 where participants from the academic and business communities will be discussing "Sustaining Canadian Growth in the Global Economy: What can business and governments do?"

The lecture and symposium marks the launch of the Rotman School's Institute for International Business. The Institute was formed by the merger of three international business and economics research centres. Its mission is to take faculty expertise in research, teaching and international exchange, and focus it on sustaining Canadian competitiveness in the new global environment. The lecture is the second event in the Rotman School of Management Great Minds for Great Business Lecture Series.

"Professor North's research on how economies grow is especially timely at this time of economic uncertainty," says Professor Wendy Dobson, director of the Institute for International Business, "It is a honour for the Rotman School to have him speak at the launch of the Institute."

Douglass North is the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for having renewed research into economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change. He shared the award with Professor Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago.

Professor North is a pioneer in the branch of economic history that has been called the "new economic history." He has spent more than fifty years pondering complex variations of a simple question: Why do some countries become rich, while others remain poor? The effect of institutions on the development of economies through time is a major emphasis in his work in both economic history and development.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Professor North graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a triple BA in political science, philosophy, and economics in 1942, and later, in 1952 received at PhD in economics from there.

He spent 33 years on the economics faculty at the University of Washington in Seattle before joining Washington University in St. Louis in 1983 as the Henry R Luce Professor of Law and Liberty in the Department of Economics. He has held several other prestigious teaching fellowships as a visiting professor including the Pitt Professor of American Institutions at Cambridge University and the Peterkin Professor of Political Economy at Houston's Rice University. He is currently a Hoover Institute Senior Fellow.

Participants in the symposium on Friday include:

• Robert Z. Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Chair of International Trade and Investment, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University;
• William White, economic advisor and head, Monetary and Economic Department, Bank for International Settlements
• Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management
• Robert Brown, Clifford Clark Visiting Economist, Department of Finance and Chair, C.D. Howe Institute;
• Jack Mintz, Arthur Andersen Professor of Taxation, Rotman School of Management;
• John Cassaday, president and CEO, Shaw Media and executive vice-president, Shaw Communication Inc.

For more information:

Ken McGuffin
Public Relations Officer
Rotman School of Management
Voice (416) 946-3818
Fax (416) 978-1373
E-mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca