| Robert
M. Townsend, Research Professor, University of Chicago and Elizabeth & James Killian Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert M. Townsend is Research Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and the Elizabeth & James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. He began his career at Carnegie Mellon University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University, and received his PhD from the University of Minnesota.
His contributions in theory include the revelation principle, costly state verification, optimal multiperiod contracts, decentralization with private information, money with spatially separated agents, financial structure and growth, and forecasting the forecasts of others. His contributions in econometrics include the study of risk and insurance in developing countries, and his work on village India was awarded the Frisch Medal in 1998.
Townsend has continued to study credit and insurance and has much expertise in finance and micro credit around the world. He is also active as an advisor and consultant for international institutions and government agencies including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and is a founding member of BREAD.
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. In 2005 he was honored as keynote speaker for the prestigious Simon Kuznets Memorial Lecture Series at Yale University, and presented the Jacob Marschak Memorial Lecture at LACEA-LAMES 2007 in Bogota, Colombia.
Townsend runs a large survey operation in Thailand and has been involved deeply there for almost 20 years. Recently, he founded and became principal investigator for The Enterprise Initiative, a collaborative research consortium funded by the John Templeton Foundation between senior researchers at the University of Chicago and faculty from the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. The Enterprise Initiative seeks to explore and explain the mechanisms of wealth creation, and what is working and why in enterprise-based solutions to poverty. |