The Hoover Institution today announced a new Senior Fellowship in Economics in honor of the late economist Edward P. Lazear, made possible by the generosity of David G. Booth.
Known as the founder of the field of personnel economics, Lazear, the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the Davies Family Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, served at the White House as President George W. Bush’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.The Booth Derbas Family/Edward Lazear Senior Fellowship was created in tribute to Lazear’s outstanding scholarship, distinguished career and personal qualities, and will be awarded to an eminent Hoover senior fellow in economics.
“Eddie Lazear was a rare combination --- an extraordinary academic economist and a dedicated public servant who brought that intellect and skill to the solution of big policy problems, said Condoleezza Rice, the Director of the Hoover Institution. “This generous fellowship will allow Hoover to recruit the best and brightest economic scholar we can find. One who will be able to live up to the fellowship’s namesake and continue Eddie’s legacy as a champion of big ideas and free-markets.”
Lazear and Booth, who is founder and executive chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, had a long professional history and a friendship of more than 40 years. Lazear began his career in 1974 at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business which was renamed in 2008 in recognition of his significant gift to the school.
“I’ve come across very few economists as objective with their research and energetic about their field as Eddie,” said Booth. “I have no doubt he will be remembered as one of the greatest economists of our time, and I will be forever grateful for his friendship and contributions.” It is befitting that Lazear’s legacy be memorialized in this way by his dear friend and decades-long colleague.
In recognition of Lazear’s impact as the Davies Family Professor of Economics at Stanford GSB, and in honor of Booth’s children Erin Booth and Khalid Derbas, both MBA 2018, the Stanford GSB will also benefit from the scholarship of the Booth Derbas Family/Edward Lazear Senior Fellowship.
“I’m delighted this fellowship will strengthen the intellectual exchange that Eddie exemplified between the GSB and Hoover,” said Jonathan Levin, Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean of Stanford GSB. “It is a wonderful way to honor his legacy at Stanford.”
Lazear has been affiliated with the Hoover Institution and the Stanford community for over three decades and was a popular teacher who inspired enthusiasm about economics in generations of students. His career at Stanford was interrupted between 2006 and 2009 when he answered President George W. Bush’s call to government service to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. In this role, he was central to crafting the federal government’s policy response to the global financial crisis of 2007–08.
Lazear lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on November 23, 2020. He is survived by his wife, Victoria, his daughter, Julie, and son-in-law Dustin Dupuis.
