Please note that this event is in-person only, and RSVPs are requested to attend. Walk-ins are welcome.
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The 2025-26 Tanner Lecture features economist Nicholas Stern discussing the economics of an ethically sound world.

The twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss require a rapid restructuring of how we produce, consume, and care for the environment. This lecture will explore how a new economics can guide these changes to our systems, structures, and technologies that are necessary to lead us toward a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. We need an ethically sound public economics where structures are dynamic, where market failures are taken seriously, where change is driven by private-sector investment, and where time matters.

2-day Event Schedule
Lecture by Nicholas Stern with Heather Boushey
Thursday, March 12, 5–7pm | Denning House, Rm 210
Discussion Seminar with Nicholas Stern, Simon Caney, and Gretchen Daily
Friday, March 13, 10am–12pm | Denning House, Rm 201

This event is hosted by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Office of the President.

Speaker:

Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Chair of the Global School of Sustainability at the London School of Economics. He has held posts at other UK and overseas universities, and as Chief Economist at both the EBRD and the World Bank. He was Head, UK Government Economic Service 2003-2007, and produced the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. He was President of the Royal Economic Society (2018-2019).  He was President of the British Academy (July 2013-2017) and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (June 2014). He was knighted for services to economics (2004), made a life peer (2007), and appointed Companion of Honour for services to economics, international relations and tackling climate change in 2017. He has published more than 15 books and 100 articles.

Discussant:

Heather Boushey is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. She served in the Biden administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist to the President’s Invest in Cabinet. She is a Professor of Practice at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design and a nonresident fellow at the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. Boushey co-founded and served as the President & CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her book, Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It, which was called “outstanding” and “piercing” by reviewers, was on the Financial Times list of best economics books of 2019.

This event will have a videographer and photographer present to document the event. No personal recordings (audio or visual) are allowed. By attending, you consent for your image to be used for Stanford-related promotions and materials. If you have any questions, please contact ethics-center@stanford.edu.

If you require disability-related accommodation, please contact disability.access@stanford.edu as soon as possible or at least 7 business days in advance of the event.

See this link for information about Visitor parking. 

Learn more about the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.