Lawrence Summers
Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Contact:
Website: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lsummer/
Publications: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lsummer/publications.htm
AP Images
January 21, 2013
"End the Damaging Obsession With Deficit"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
In the two and a half months between the election and this week’s inauguration of President Barack Obama, America’s public policy debate has been focused on prospective budget deficits and what can be done to reduce them. Lawrence Summers writes that while we should address budget deficits, we should "not obsess over it in counterproductive ways – nor lose sight of the jobs and growth deficits that will ultimately have the greatest impact on the way this generation of Americans lives and what they bequeath to the next."
December 16, 2012
"How to Fix Costly and Unjust U.S. Tax System"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
"Sooner or later the American tax code will be reformed...," writes former Treasury Secretary and Harvard Kennedy School professor Lawrence Summers. "Raising revenue will be the main motivation, but at a time of sharply increasing economic polarisation, issues of fairness will be prominent too. There are also legitimate concerns about the complexity of current tax rules and their adverse effects on the economy."
November 5, 2012
"The 'Obama debt' fallacy"
Op-Ed, Reuters
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Lawrence Summers writes about Mike Boskins' response to Summers' Reuters column last week arguing that in a number of areas of economic policy, President Obama has the superior vision.
October 15, 2012
"The world is stuck in a vicious cycle"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
If the global economy was in trouble before the annual World Bank and IMF meetings in Tokyo last week, it is hard to believe that it is now smooth sailing. Indeed, apart from the modest stimulus provided to the Japanese economy by all the official visitors and the wealthy financial sector hangers on, it is difficult to see what of immediate value was accomplished.
March 25, 2012
"How to ensure stimulus today, austerity tomorrow"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Economic forecasters divide into two groups. There are those who cannot know the future but think they can – and then there are those who recognise their inability to know the future. Major shifts in the economy are rarely forecast and often not fully recognised until they have been under way for some time. So judgments about the US economy have to be tentative. What can be said is that for the first time in five years a resumption of growth significantly above the economy’s potential now appears a substantial possibility. Put differently, after years when growth was more likely to surprise below expectations than above them, the risks are now very much two-sided.
AP Photo
February 27, 2012
"The U.S. Tax System Needs Rebuilding"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Whoever wins this year’s US election, the combined effect of three events – the expiry of former president George W. Bush’s tax cuts , a renewal of the legally binding limit on federal borrowing and the start of a Congressionally mandated sequester, a mechanism that will automatically cut domestic spending from 2013 – will force the president and Congress to engage deeply with fiscal issues. The decisions made will do much to determine the country’s future.
(AP Photo/Christian Lutz)
September 19, 2011
"The World Must Insist That Europe Act"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
In his celebrated essay “The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine”, published in 1972, Daniel Ellsberg drew out the lesson regarding the Vietnam war that came out of the 8,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, which he had secretly copied a few years earlier. It was simply this: policymakers acted without illusion. At every juncture they made the minimum commitments necessary to avoid imminent disaster – offering optimistic rhetoric, but never taking the steps that even they believed could offer the prospect of decisive victory.
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
June 13, 2011
"How to avoid a lost decade"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Even with the massive 2008-09 policy effort that prevented financial collapse and depression,writes Summers, the United States is now halfway to a lost economic decade.
AP Photo
June 23, 2010
"Our Agenda for the G-20"
Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and Timothy Geithner
The G-20 summit in Toronto, Canada provides an important opportunity to focus on the policies required to reinforce growth," write Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. " Engagement with the G-20 has been a key component of the administration's strategy to defuse the global financial crisis and ensure economic recovery."
AP Images
January 21, 2013
"End the Damaging Obsession With Deficit"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
In the two and a half months between the election and this week’s inauguration of President Barack Obama, America’s public policy debate has been focused on prospective budget deficits and what can be done to reduce them. Lawrence Summers writes that while we should address budget deficits, we should "not obsess over it in counterproductive ways – nor lose sight of the jobs and growth deficits that will ultimately have the greatest impact on the way this generation of Americans lives and what they bequeath to the next."
