Robert Z. Lawrence

Robert Zachary Lawrence (born 1949) is a South Africa-born American economist and Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lawrence at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, 2009

Lawrence postulated that the 1964 Chicken Tax crippled the U.S. automobile industry, by insulating it from real competition in light trucks for 40 years.[1]

Lawrence was appointed to President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers from March 1999 to January 2001. Since then, Lawrence has held the New Century Chair as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and founded and edited the Brookings Trade Forum. He is also the director of the Harvard Kennedy School Trade Group and the faculty chair of Kennedy School Executive Programs.

He immigrated to the United States in 1971 and studied at Yale University where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1978. He has written over 100 papers and articles on topics in the field of international economics. His recent research has focused on global integration and the impact of trade on the labor market.