PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Kenneth S. Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, will deliver the inaugural lecture of the Fredric B. Garonzik ’64 Lecture Series on International Economics and Finance on Monday,  Nov. 7, 2011, at 5:30 p.m. in Sayles Hall. His talk, titled “The Second Wave of the Second Great Contraction,” is free and open to the public.

Following the lecture, Rogoff will sign copies of his recent co-authored book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Kenneth Rogoff

Kenneth Rogoff is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at Harvard University. From 2001-03, Rogoff served as chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund. Rogoff’s treatise Foundations of International Macroeconomics (jointly with Maurice Obstfeld) is the standard graduate text in the field worldwide, and his monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published regularly in more than 50 countries. His recent book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, 2009), builds on a massive new data set covering 66 countries and 800 years. The book, a New York Times, Amazon.com, and international bestseller, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in both the run-up to and the aftermath of severe financial crises. Rogoff is also known for his empirical work on exchange rates and for his seminal research on central bank independence and inflation targeting as an institutional device for enhancing the credibility of monetary policy.

Rogoff is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Group of Thirty. He has been invited to give numerous named research lectures at universities around the world and also speaks widely on global economic issues. He holds the life title of international grandmaster of chess. He is 2011 winner of the biennial Deutsche Bank Prize awarded by the Center for Financial Economics, as well as the 2011 Adam Smith Award. Rogoff is on the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Fredric B. Garonzik ’64

Fredric “Rick” Garonzik graduated from Brown in 1964 and later served as a trustee of the Corporation of Brown University and a member of the Board of Overseers of the Watson Institute for International Studies. Garonzik spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, joining the firm in 1972 in the Fixed Income Division. He went on to serve as head of municipal underwriting, trading, and sales, and was named vice president in 1979. He was named partner in 1984 and served as head of fixed income sales, and, later, head of debt capital markets in London. When he retired in 1998, Garonzik was co-head of the global Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities Division of the firm. Additionally, Garonzik served on the boards of the Union Settlement Association, the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Buckley School. Family, friends, and colleagues established the Fredric B. Garonzik ’64 Lecture Series on International Economics and Finance following his death in 2008.