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The Economics Department is proud to announce Leonardo Bursztyn as the Fall 2025 David Kinley Lecturer. Prof. Bursztyn will present "Social Norms, Markets, and Behavior". The lecture will take place on Monday, November 10th from 4:00-5:30 pm in 314AB of the Illini Union.
Leonardo Bursztyn is the Saieh Family Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also an Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, the co-director of the Becker Friedman Institute Political Economics Initiative and of the Program in Behavioral Economics Research, and the founder and director of the Normal Lab.
His research seeks to better understand how individuals' main economic decisions are shaped by their social environments. His work has examined educational, labor market, financial, consumption, and political decisions, both in developing and developed countries.
Leonardo is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and an affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and at the Pearson Institute. He is also the recipient of a 2016 Sloan Research Fellowship. He received his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 2010.
Source: Leonardo Bursztyn
About David Kinley
Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign owes its beginnings and early development to David Kinley, a man clearly on the fast-track. Born in Dundee, Scotland, August 2, 1861, Kinley came to the United States at the age of 11. He attended high school in Massachusetts and earned a B.A. degree from Yale in 1884. After having served as a principal of a high school in Massachusetts, Kinley went to Johns Hopkins in 1890, where he studied with Richard T. Ely and Woodrow Wilson. Kinley accompanied Ely to the University of Wisconsin in 1892 and received the first Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1893. Degrees in hand, Kinley traveled south to Champaign-Urbana, where he was appointed Assistant Professor of Economics. One year later, he was promoted to Professor of Economics, and as the ranking instructor, founded the Department of Economics in 1895. Kinley held the position of Professor of Economics and Dean of the College of Literature and Arts until 1906. In addition to his duties as Dean and Professor of Economics, Kinley taught eight undergraduate courses in 1894-95. In the next year, he taught eight undergraduate classes again, plus one graduate class, and in the following year he added a ninth undergraduate course.
The School of Commerce was founded in 1902 with Kinley as its Director. Kinley sought to include both political science and industrial economics in the new School, but this was opposed by the University Senate. A compromise was reached leaving political science in the College of Literature and Arts, and moving industrial economics to the new School of Commerce.
In 1906, Kinley was appointed Dean of the Graduate School. He remained the Director of courses in the School of Commerce (or Commerce School as it was called on Campus), but he gave up the Deanship of the College of Literature and Arts. Kinley was Dean of the Graduate School for eight years, thereafter becoming Vice President of the University in 1914. He was Acting President of the University 1919-1920, and President from 1920 until 1930.
At the strong urging of Kinley, the University Senate approved the formation of the College of Commerce and Business Administration in June, 1914, and the Board of Trustees followed with their approval on April 27, 1915. The College was housed in the new Commerce building, dedicated in 1913, and built at a cost of about $100,000. This building is now the East half of the Administration Building. The Commerce Building was constructed mainly in 1912, and occupied in the Spring of 1913.
David Kinley was the 15th President of the American Economics Association. His main interests in economics were money and banking and government regulation of business. His Presidential Address to the American Economics Association in 1913 was titled "Renewed Extension of Government Control of Economic Life. " Among his books were The Independent Treasury of the United States (1893), Money (1904), and Government Control of Economic Life and Other Addresses (1936).
Kinley was active in state and local affairs, served on many boards and commissions, and traveled widely. He held honorary degrees from Illinois College (1908), the University of Wisconsin (1918), the University of Nebraska (1921), and Yale (1924). He died in 1944 at Urbana-Champaign at the age of eighty-three. David Kinley Hall on the Campus of the University of Illinois bears his name.
The text is from an article that appeared in the Special Issue of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, "Illinois Centennial Essays on Economics", edited by Werner Baer and H.F. Williamson, Jr. , Volume 36, 1996.
By Jane H. Leuthold
Past David Kinley Lectures in Economics
David Kinley is the most distinguished and important economist in our Department's history. He founded the Department, served as its first Head, and in 1913 was its second member to be elected President of the American Economics Association. He went on to serve as President of the University of Illinois from 1920-1930 with great success.
To honor David Kinley, his family has generously endowed this public lecture series. Past speakers are listed below. In recent years, speakers have given a second Departmental Lecture that focuses on a more narrow aspect of their current research.
2000-Present
| Date | Name | Association | Lecture |
|---|---|---|---|
| PAST LECTURES | |||
| September 24th, 2025 | Yuriy Gorodnichenko | University of California – Berkeley | "Subjective Inflation Expectations and Decisions" |
| April 3rd, 2024 | Stefan Dercon | Oxford | "Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose" |
April 10th, 2023 | Matthew Gentzkow | Stanford | "Social Media and Polarization" |
| November 29th, 2022 | Deirdre McCloskey | University of Illinois at Chicago | "How Liberalism Enriched the World, 1648-Present" |
| March 30, 2002 | John List | University of Chicago | "The Voltage Effect" |
Friday, February 10, 2017 8:45-10:15am | Guido Imbens | Stanford | "Clustering As a Design Problem" (Departmental Lecture) |
| February 9th, 2017 | Guido Imbens | Stanford | "Casuality in Statistics and Econometrics" (Public Lecture) |
March 5th, 2014
| Chris Sims | Princeton | "Fed policy and the economy: What's happened, and what's to come" |
March 7th, 2013
| Peter Diamond | MIT | "Cyclical Unemployment, Structural Unemployment" |
| October 25th, 2012 | Austan Goolsbee | University of Chicago | "America's Economy and the World: Why the Long Face?" (Public Lecture) |
| March 14th, 2012 | John Cambell | Harvard | Mortgage Market Design (Public Lecture) |
| October 11, 2007 | Angus Deaton | Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Economics, Princeton University | "Health and Wellbeing around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll" and "Child Mortality, Income, and Adult Height" |
| September 26, 2006 | K. Daron Acemoglu | Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics, MIT | "Rethinking the Wealth of Nations" and "Learning and Disagreement in an Uncertain World" |
| September 9th, 2005 | Orley Ashenfelter | Princeton University | "Evolution of the Global Labor Market: Continuity vs Change" and "The Value of a Statistical Life: Problems and Pitfalls" |
| May 2nd, 2005 | John Geanakoplos | Director, Cowles Foundation, Yale University | "How the Modern Financial System Works: Mortgages, Hedge Funds, and Market Crashes" and "Leverage, Liquidity, and Crashes" |
| April 15, 2005 | Jean Tirole | Scientific Director, Institut d'Economie Industrielle, and visiting Professor at MIT | "Platform Industries: How Software, Videogames, Credit Cards, Media, and Auctions Differ from Other Markets, and What It Means for the Future of the Economy" and "Incentive and Prosocial Behavior" Pictures from the event are available here |
| April 8th, 2004 | Paul M. Romer | STANCO 25 Professor Economics; Ralph Ladau Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution | "Tragedies of the Environmental and Intellectual Commons" and "What Should We Teach Students about Macroeconomics" |
| April 11th, 2004 | Elhanan Helpman | Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University | "Growth and Interdependence" and "Exports vs. FDI" |
| March 14th, 2003 | Edward C. Prescott | Regents' Professor, University of Minnesota and Senior Advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis | "Why Do Americans Work So Much and Europeans So Little" and "What Equity Premium?" |
| March 7th, 2002 | Thomas J. Sargent | Stanford University, Hoover Institution | "Flawed but Enduring: The Monetary System from 1200-1800: A Tale of Small Fixed Cost" and "Robustness in Macroeconomics" |
| October 26th, 2001 | Jeffrey G. Williamson | Harvard University | "Globalization, Wolrd Inequality, and Political Backlash" |
| February 12th, 2001 | James Poterba | MIT | "Annuity Markets and Retirement Security" |
| Novmember 29th, 2000 | Alberto Alesina | Havard University | "The Redistribution of Income: Why, and How Much?" |
| March 21, 2000 | Robert H. Porter | Northwestern University | "The Market for Used Cars: Lemons or Sweet Deals? An Empirical Investigation" |
1990-1999
| Date | Name | Association | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 1999 | Charles R. Plott | California Institute of Technology | |
| Fall 1998 | David Kreps | Paul E. Holden Professor of Economics, Stanford University | |
| Spring 1998 | James J. Heckman | Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago | |
| Fall 1997 | Robert Barro | Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, Harvard University | |
| Spring 1997 | Robert Barro | Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, Harvard University | |
| Spring 1996 | Mancur Olson | University of Maryland | |
| Spring 1995 | Hal Varian | Ruben Kempf Professor of Economics, University of Michigan | |
| Fall 1994 | Graciela Chichilnisky | Columbia University | |
| Spring 1994 | Jagdish N. Bhagwati | Arthur Lehman Professor of Political Science, Columbia University | |
| Spring 1993 | Robert Townsend | The Charles E. Merriam Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College, University of Chicago | |
| Spring 1992 | Roy Radner | AT&T Bell Labs | |
| Fall 1991 | William Baumol | Princeton University | |
| Spring 1991 | John Whalley | University of Western Ontario | |
| Fall 1990 | Robert Aumann | Hebrew University, Jerusalem | |
| Spring 1990 | Paul A. David | Stanford University |
1980-1989
| Date | Name | Association |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 1989 | Leonid Hurwicz | University of Minnesota |
| Spring 1989 | Lawrence Summers | Harvard University |
| November 9, 1988 | Harold Demsetz | Arthur W. Anderson & Co. , UCLA Alumni Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles |
| October 6, 1988 | Amartya Sen | Harvard University |
| October 14, 1987 | Lester Thurow | MIT |
| Spring 1987 | Roger Noll | Stanford University |
| Fall 1986 | Alan Blinder | Princeton University |
| Spring 1986 | Hans Brems | University of Illinois |
| Spring 1985 | Franco Modigliani | MIT |
| Fall 1984 | Martin Shubik | Yale University |
| Spring 1984 | Joseph Stiglitz | Stanford University |
| Spring 1983 | Gary S. Becker | University of Chicago |
| Spring 1982 | Alfred Kahn | Cornell University |
| Spring 1981 | James M. Buchanan | Center for study of Public Choice, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Spring 1980 | Martin S. Feldstein | Professor, Harvard |
1974-1979
| Date | Name | Association |
|---|---|---|
| Spring 1979 | Joan Robinson | Cambridge University |
| Fall 1978 | Franklin M. Fisher | MIT |
| Spring 1977 | Robert W. Fogel | Harvard University |
| Spring 1977 | Jacques Dréze | Universite Catholique de Louvain |
| Fall 1975 | M. A. Adelman | MIT |
| Spring 1975 | Arthur M. Okun | Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Former Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers |
| Spring 1975 | Charles P. Kindleberger | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Spring 1974 | Nicholas Kaldor | Cambridge University |