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Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder
  • In Person

The American Economy in a New Era

Note: This is a past event, additional resources may be available below.

Wed Aug 5, 2026

Date

Wed Aug 5, 2026
1:30pm – 2:30pm MDT

Location

Paepcke Auditorium
1000 N. Third Street
Aspen, CO

Contact

    [email protected]
    970.544.7970

Hosts

  1. Aspen Community Programs

Presented in collaboration with the Aspen Economic Strategy Group as part of the McCloskey Speaker Series.

The US economy is entering a new era. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are expected to bring large-scale disruption to households, businesses, and public finances. Ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, Europe, and China have strained supply chains and driven inflation to its highest levels since the COVID-19 pandemic. Erik Brynjolfsson, professor at Stanford University, and Peter Orszag, CEO of Lazard, join the Aspen Institute for a conversation moderated by Melissa S. Kearney, director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group and professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. Together, they will explore how policymakers and business leaders can promote broad-based domestic growth and strengthen America’s global economic competitiveness in this new era.
Paepcke Auditorium, doors at 1:00 pm

Registration
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required, and capacity is established on a first-come, first-served basis. Once an event is at capacity, we will have an in-person waitlist at the door.

Public registration is now open for summer 2026. Please click here to register.

Parking
Parking is very limited. Please carpool, walk, bike, or ride RFTA.

Erik Brynjolfsson is a global expert on the economics of technology and AI. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). A leading voice on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first to quantify IT’s impact on productivity and the role of intangibles like organizational capital. At Stanford, he leads research on Transformative AI—systems poised to rapidly reshape productivity, labor markets, and prosperity—developing frameworks to help ensure this shift benefits society. Brynjolfsson has written nine books including the bestseller The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, and Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future, and published more than 100 academic articles and five patents. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and a PhD from MIT in managerial economics.

 

Peter R. Orszag is the CEO and Chairman of Lazard, the global financial advisory and asset management firm. Peter joined Lazard in 2016 and previously served as CEO of its Financial Advisory business. He has had a distinguished career spanning finance, public policy, and academia. Prior to joining Lazard, Peter was Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Obama Administration and Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He also served in the Clinton Administration at the Council of Economic Advisers and as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Peter is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. He also serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Mount Sinai Hospital. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and earned his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar.

 

Melissa S. Kearney is the Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. She is also director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group; a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of MDRC and on the Board of the Notre Dame Wilson-Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Kearney previously served as the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, Director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings, and co-chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative. Kearney’s research focuses on US poverty, inequality, social policy, and the economics of fertility and families. She has served in editorial positions for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; Journal of Economic Literature; Journal of Human Resources; Demography; and Future of Children. She is the author of The Two-Parent Privilege (University of Chicago Press, 2023.) Kearney teaches Public Economics at both the undergraduate and Ph.D. level. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.

 

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