The McKay Lecture Series is named for Professor Marion McKay, a past Department Chair. The lecture is open to the public and usually attracts a large audience of students and faculty, not only from within the university, but also from other local universities, and from the Pittsburgh business and local community. The lecture is scheduled at a time convenient for the guest speaker, usually in March or April.
Dr. McKay was Chair of the Economics Department here for over thirty years and remained active in economic and social questions until his death in 1978 at the age of 95. A fund was established in his honor. One of the terms of the fund was the establishment of the McKay Lecture to bring a distinguished economist to the University of Pittsburgh to speak on a topic of broad interest. The lecture series began in 1977, and past McKay Lecturers include James Tobin, Don Patinkin, Herbert Simon, Robert Lucas, Phyllis Deane, Gary Becker, Robert Solow, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Townsend, Peter Diamond, Daron Acemoglu, Esther Duflo, Claudia Goldin and Alvin Roth.
We are pleased to offer information about previous and upcoming McKay lectures, including recordings of lectures held since 2023:
- March 29, 2024 - John List, "Leveraging Private Sector Data to Help Inform Major Social Challenges"
- April 6, 2023 - David Autor, "The Work of the Future: Where will it come from?"
- February 20, 2014 - Alvin Roth, "Market Design: The Economist as Engineer"
- December 6, 2010 - Claudia Goldin, "Career and Family Conundrum"
- March 20, 2009 - Esther Duflo, "Experiments, Science, and the Fight Against Poverty"
- November 16, 2007 - Peter Diamond, "Thinking About Taxes"
- April 29, 2005 - Daron Acemoglu, "Rethinking the Wealth of Nations"
- September 23, 1998 - Joseph Stiglitz, ""Must Economic Crises Be This Frequent And This Painful?"
- September 16, 1988 - Amartya Sen, "Substantive Justice: Goods or Capabilities"
- April 28, 1983 - Marina von Neumann Whitman, "American and European Perspectives on Unemployment: Cyclical and Structural Aspects"
- May 4, 1982 - Gary Becker, "Competition Among Pressure Groups and the Political Redistribution of Income"
- May 9, 1980 - Robert Lucas, "Some Recent Developments in Macroeconomics"
- May 9, 1978 - Herbert A. Simon, "Implications of Research on Decision-Making for Macroeconomics"
- January 25, 1977 - James Tobin, "Full Employment: The Impossible Dream"