Newman University and the Notre Dame Club of Wichita will host Michael J. Pries, Ph.D. as the guest speaker for this year’s Hesburgh Lecture. The lecture, entitled “Our Growing National Debt and What it Means for Our Economic Future,” will be held at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 16 in the Dugan-Gorges Conference Center on the Newman campus, 3100 McCormick in Wichita. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Each year, Newman partners with the Notre Dame Society of Wichita to host the Hesburgh Lecture, which brings a noted academic from Notre Dame University to the Newman campus to discuss a topic of interest. Pries will address the subject of our country’s debt and how such debt may impact our nation in the future. His current research focuses on the augmentation and persistence of shocks to the labor markets, and on cross-country differences in labor market performance. Pries has published articles in The Journal of Political Economy, The Review of Economic Studies, The Review of Economic Dynamics, and the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.
According to Newman University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael Austin, Ph.D., Pries was selected because of the topic’s relevance to the November election.
“Pries was chosen by a vote of the faculty and staff from among the 150 speakers listed in the Notre Dame speaker’s bureau,” Austin said. “We felt that his topic would be very important in an election year that has featured so much discussion about the national debt.”
Pries is currently an associate professor in economics at the University of Notre Dame where his main focus of study is in macroeconomics, with a focus on labor markets. Before starting his career at Notre Dame, Pries was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. In 2007 he joined the University of Notre Dame in the Department of Economics and Econometrics. He teaches macroeconomics at the graduate and undergraduate levels and has taught classes in financial markets.
Pries received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1993, and his doctorate in economics from Stanford University in 1999.
