Peter Blair Henry

{{short description|American economist}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2024}}

{{Infobox officeholder

|name = Peter Henry

|image = Peter Blair Henry.jpg

|office = Dean of the New York University Stern School of Business

|term_start = January 2010

|term_end = December 2017

|predecessor = Thomas F. Cooley

|successor = Raghu Sundaram

|birth_date = {{birth date and age|1969|7|30}}

|birth_place = Kingston, Jamaica

|death_date =

|death_place =

|education = University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill {{small|(BA)}}
St Catherine's College, Oxford {{small|(BA)}}
Massachusetts Institute of Technology {{small|(PhD)}}

|website = {{URL|peterblairhenry.com|Official website}}

}}

Peter Blair Henry, an economist, was the ninth Dean of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business,{{cite news|last=Murray|first=Sarah|title=The bigger picture|url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/703f0e20-1d74-11df-a893-00144feab49a.html#axzz2E8r07iXd|access-date=December 4, 2012|newspaper=Financial Times|date=February 21, 2010}} and author of [http://www.peterblairhenry.com/ TURNAROUND: Third World Lessons for First World Growth] (Basic Books, March 2013). Previously, he was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford University.[http://fsi.stanford.edu/people/Peter_B_Henry "Peter B. Henry, PhD Biography"], fsi.stanford.edu, 2008. Retrieved 02-14-2013

Background and education

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1969, Peter Blair Henry became a US citizen in 1986.[http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/peter-henry "Peter Blair Henry"], stern.nyu.edu, 2013. Retrieved 02-14-13

Henry was a Rhodes Scholar at St Catherine's College, Oxford where he received a BA in mathematics in 1993 and a Full Blue in basketball. He also received a BA in economics with distinction and highest honors in 1991 from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead-Cain Scholar, a National Merit Scholar, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Marshall Scholar-Elect, a reserve wide receiver on the varsity football team, and a finalist in the 1991 campus-wide slam-dunk competition.

Henry received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1997. While in graduate school, he served as a consultant to the Governors of the Bank of Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB). His research at the ECCB contributed to the intellectual foundation for establishing the first securities exchange in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Area.

Career

=Academic=

Peter Blair Henry is Dean Emeritus of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. The youngest person to hold the position, he assumed the Deanship in January 2010 and joined the NYU Stern Faculty as the William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Finance.

Henry joined NYU Stern from Stanford University, where he was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics, the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar, and associate director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Henry's research and teaching have received support from the National Science Foundation's Early CAREER Development Program (2001–2006). From 2000 to 2001, Henry was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Henry also serves as a member of the board of directors at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER),[http://www.nber.org/board.html "Board of Directors"], www.nber.org, October 2012. Retrieved 02-14-2013 the nation's leading nonprofit, non-partisan economic research organization; as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations;[http://www.cfr.org/about/people/board_of_directors.html "Officers and Directors"], www.cfr.org. Retrieved 02-14-2013 as a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution;[http://www.brookings.edu/experts/henryp "Peter Blair Henry"], www.brookings.edu. Retrieved 02-14-2013 as a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Economic Advisory Panel;[https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/ag_economic.html "Economic Advisory Panel"], www.newyorkfed.org. Retrieved 02-02-2016 and as a member of the board of directors for Citigroup as well as General Electric and Nike, Inc.[http://www.citi.com/citi/about/leaders/peter-henry-bio.html "Peter Blair Henry"], www.citi.com. Retrieved 07-28-2015 In 2015, Henry was awarded the [http://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/news-events/fpa-award-peter-henry Foreign Policy Association Medal], the highest honor bestowed by the organization.[http://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/news-events/fpa-award-peter-henry "Foreign Policy Association Awards Medal to Peter Henry"], stern.nyu.edu, February 27, 2015. Retrieved 07-28-2015

In 2018, the Council for Economic Education honored Henry with its Visionary Award.{{cite web|url=https://www.councilforeconed.org/visionaryawards/past-honorees/|title=Visionary Awards: Celebrate with CEE the leaders of Economic Education|publisher=}}

=Government=

An expert on the global economy, Henry led the external economics advisory group for then-Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. Following the historic victory on November 4, Henry was chosen to lead the Presidential Transition Team's review of international lending agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. In June 2009, President Obama appointed him to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships.[https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-Announces-Appointments-to-the-Presidents-Commission-on-White-House-Fellowships/ "President Obama Announces Appointments to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100411113924/https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-Announces-Appointments-to-the-Presidents-Commission-on-White-House-Fellowships/ |date=2010-04-11 }}, The White House - Office of the Press Secretary, June 17, 2009. Retrieved 02-14-2013

=Books, publications and media=

Henry's first book, [http://www.peterblairhenry.com/ TURNAROUND: Third World Lessons for First World Growth] (Basic Books, March 2013),Henry, Peter B., [http://www.peterblairhenry.com/ TURNAROUND: Third World Lessons for First World Growth], Basic Books, March 2013. Retrieved 02-14-2013{{cite book|author=Peter Blair Henry|title=Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth|url=https://archive.org/details/turnaroundthirdw0000henr|url-access=registration|year=2013|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-0-465-03191-7}} directly addresses issues of economic efficiency as well as matters of international relations. In it, Henry argues that the secret to emerging countries' success (and to the future prosperity of the developed world as well) is discipline—a sustained commitment to a pragmatic growth strategy. In many ways, TURNAROUND is an extension of Henry's very first lesson in international economics, which he received at the age of eight as his family moved from the Caribbean island of Jamaica to affluent Wilmette, Illinois. The elusive answer to the question of why the average standard of living can be so different from one country to another still drives him today.

The author of numerous articles and book chapters, Henry is best known for a series of publications in the three flagship journals of the American Economic Association that overturn conventional wisdom on the topics of debt relief, international capital flows, and the role of institutions in economic growth: "Debt Relief" Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 2006);Arslanalp, Serkan and Peter B. Henry, [https://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/31608/2/pbh%20-%20debt%20relief.pdf "Debt Relief"], Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2006. Retrieved 02-14-2013 "Capital Account Liberalization: Theory, Evidence, and Speculation" Journal of Economic Literature (December 2007);Henry, Peter B., [https://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/31606/2/pbh%20-%20capital%20account%20liberalization.pdf "Capital Account Liberalization: Theory, Evidence and Speculation"], Journal of Economic Literature, 2007. Retrieved 02-14-2013 "Institutions vs. Policies: A Tale of Two Islands" American Economic Review (May 2009).Henry, Peter B. and Conrad Miller, [https://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/31605/2/pbh%20-%20institutions%20vs.%20policies.pdf "Institutions vs. Policies: A Tale of Two Islands"], American Economic Review, 2009. Retrieved 02-14-2013 Henry's writing also appears in Global Crises, Global Solutions,Lomborg, Bjørn, [http://www.cambridge.org/uk/economics/globalcrises/copenhagen_consensus.html "Global Crises, Global Solutions"], Cambridge University Press, 2004. Retrieved 02-14-2013 the published proceedings of the Copenhagen Consensus, an international conference on how to make the most efficient use of the world's scarcest resources. The Economist magazine named the conference publication one of the Best Business Books of 2004.Staff, [http://www.economist.com/node/3422856 "Books of the year 2004"], The Economist, November 25, 2004. Retrieved 02-14-2013

Henry is also known to have spoken on William Arthur Lewis and his dual-sector model in his 2014 speech [http://www.peterblairhenry.com/capital-labor-arthur-lewis-lecture/ “Capital and Labor in the 21st Century: A Cautionary Tale”]Henry, P. B. (2014). Capital and Labor in the 21st Century: A Cautionary Tale. Retrieved April 8, 2024, from http://www.peterblairhenry.com/capital-labor-arthur-lewis-lecture/ by discussing the importance of developing nations to create enough jobs to keep up with their growing working-age populations and similarly advocating for modern capitalist economies and incorporating his own insights on liberalized capital accounts open to foreign capital.

More recently, Henry's work with Camille Gardner in [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20221530 “The Global Infrastructure Gap: Potential, Perils, and a Framework for Distinction”] Journal of Economic Literature (December 2023)Gardner, C., & Henry, P. B. (2023). The global infrastructure gap: Potential, perils, and a framework for distinction. Journal of Economic Literature, 61(4), 1318–1358. [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20221530 https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20221530] tackled global infrastructure and the importance of foreign investment to the infrastructure and overall productivity and employment of developing countries. They also found that this not only would greatly benefit developing countries and their ability to absorb and support growing working-age populations, but also have great potential for developed countries to see significant private and social capital returns on investments.

Henry is regularly cited in the media including on CNBC,Staff,[http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=1811237245 "Taking on Emerging Markets"] CNBC, February 23, 2011. Retrieved 02-14-2013 Financial Times, Foreign Policy,Henry, Peter B., [https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/08/the_wisdom_of_the_stock_market_economic_recovery "The Wisdom of the Market"], Foreign Policy, February 8, 2013. Retrieved 02-14-13 and others.

Personal life

He lives with his wife and their four sons in New York City. He is also the cousin of Orange is the New Black star Samira Wiley.

References

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