Michael Spence

Why organisations work with Michael Spence

• Few people in the world can translate frontier economic theory into language a board can act on. His 1973 paper on signalling is foundational to information economics; he brings the same rigour to current questions about growth and capital allocation.
• He chaired the Commission on Growth and Development from 2006 to 2010. Its Growth Report directly shaped how the World Bank and major development institutions approach long-term growth strategy. That policy depth is in the room when he speaks.
• As Chairman of the GA Global Growth Institute at General Atlantic, he is one of very few academic economists actively engaged in live capital allocation decisions. Boards get a perspective that has been pressure-tested against real investment choices.
• His analysis of China, India, and the developing world draws on direct engagement, including a co-chair role at the Asia Global Institute in Hong Kong.
• His 2023 book Permacrisis, written with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian, gives organisations a current, public-facing argument about cascading global risks and the policy choices that could break the cycle.

Biography highlights

• 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, for work on markets with asymmetric information.
• John Bates Clark Medal (1981) from the American Economic Association.
• William R. Berkley Professor in Economics and Business at NYU Stern; Dean Emeritus of Stanford Graduate School of Business; former Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
• Chaired the Commission on Growth and Development (2006 to 2010), the independent international body whose Growth Report shaped how the World Bank and IMF approach development strategy.
• Senior Advisor to General Atlantic and Chairman of the GA Global Growth Institute; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
• Co-author of Permacrisis (Simon & Schuster, 2023, with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian) and author of The Next Convergence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); long-standing Project Syndicate columnist.

Biography

In 2001 the Nobel committee recognised a 1973 paper. Michael Spence’s work on signalling reshaped how economists think about markets where buyers and sellers do not have the same information. That is most of the markets corporate strategists care about.

From 2006 to 2010, Spence chaired the Commission on Growth and Development. The Growth Report it produced is still cited inside the World Bank, the IMF, and finance ministries across the developing world. It remains a touchstone for how senior policymakers approach long-term growth strategy in developing economies.

His current focus sits at the meeting point of macroeconomics and capital allocation. As Chairman of the GA Global Growth Institute at General Atlantic, he sits inside one of the world’s largest growth equity firms. He helps the firm think through how technology and geopolitics now shape where capital can productively flow. His 2023 book Permacrisis, written with Gordon Brown and Mohamed El-Erian, took the same argument to a wider audience.

His Project Syndicate column, running since 2008, lands on the desks of senior policymakers and institutional investors. Recent essays have covered single points of failure in global supply chains, AI adoption in emerging markets, and why open markets often fail to produce homegrown tech champions outside the US and China.

Key speaking topics

• Global economic growth and structural change
• Information economics and decision-making under uncertainty
• Emerging markets and the rise of Asia
• Capital allocation in a fragmented global economy
• Trade, supply chains, and geopolitical risk
• Technology, AI, and the future of productivity
• Climate, energy transition, and sustainable growth

Ideal for

• CEOs, Group Strategy Officers, and CFOs setting capital allocation across global markets
• Boards and non-executive directors with multi-region exposure
• Ministers of finance and economy, central bankers, and senior policymakers in international institutions
• Institutional investors, asset managers, and growth equity teams setting long-horizon allocations

Audience outcomes

• A sharper internal articulation of what has actually changed about growth, inflation, and trade since 2008.
• A working sense of how emerging markets and Asia are actually growing, drawing on direct engagement with policymakers and capital markets in those regions.
• A grounded view of where AI and the green transition will and will not reshape productivity at country and sector level.
• A current reading of the cascading risks set out in Permacrisis, including the policy choices that could break the cycle.