UM Lecture Series Opens with Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

MISSOULA – A world-known authority on economic inequality on health will open the President’s Lecture Series at the University of Montana.

Princeton University Professor Emeritus Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, will present “Mortality and Morbidity in the United States” at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 7, in the Dennison Theatre.

Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department. His wife, Anne Case, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the same school, will participate in a session  following the lecture. She is an authority on development and health economics, and the two have published several papers together.

Deaton also will lead the seminar “Global Poverty and Why It Is So Hard to Erase” from 3 to 4:30 p.m. the same day in Gallagher Business Building Room 123. The lecture and seminar both are free and open to the public.

After earning a doctorate in economics from Cambridge University in 1974, Deaton taught there for several years before becoming a professor of econometrics at the University of Bristol. In 1983, he took the position at Princeton University that he held until his retirement in 2016.

In 1978, Deaton became the first recipient of the Frisch Medal, an award given by the Econometric Society every two years to an applied paper published in Econometrica.

His 1980 paper in the American Economic Review on how demand for various consumption goods depends on prices and income has been hailed as one of the 20 most influential articles published in the journal in its first 100 years.

On the occasion of Deaton’s winning the Nobel Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sweden declared that in the process of enhancing our understanding of the connections between poverty and consumption choices, he “has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics and development economics.”

In 2016, he was made a Knight Bachelor for his services to economics and international affairs.

These awards represent only a sampling of the numerous honors Deaton has received over the course of his career. He also has published a vast number of papers in major economics journals, including “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality” in 2013, “Health Inequality and Economic Development” in 2001, “The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Macroeconometric Approach to Development Policy” in 1997, “Understanding Consumption” in 1992 and “Economics and Consumer Behavior,” which he wrote along with John Muellbauer in 1980.

His current research focuses on the determining factors of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty and inequality in the United States, India and around the world.

The President’s Lecture Series at UM consists of seven talks throughout the academic year on vital topics by distinguished guest speakers. For more information on the series, visithttp://umt.edu/president/events/lectures/ or call UM history Professor Richard Drake at 406-243-2981.

Photo: Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton. Photo courtesy of Princeton University.