DATE: 12 p.m. March 25, 2009.

EVENT: Conversations on Europe lecture on “Europe’s Political and Economic Challenges” by Jan Svejnar, director of the International Policy Center at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Everett E. Berg Professor of Business Administration, and professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. In 2008 he was a candidate for the presidency of the Czech Republic.

The lecture will address the financial crisis and economic recession in Europe. As these become deeper, European-U.S. leadership is becoming indispensable for preventing a major worldwide crisis, Svejnar says. While the U.S. approach to the crisis has many flaws, it is more internally consistent than the partial and mostly uncoordinated initiatives observed in Europe. A large-scale joint European-US approach is needed to reverse the downward spiral. He says a key aspect is how to provide better supervision and regulation of the financial sector, while not over-constraining the world economy.

Svejnar is a founder and chairman of CERGE-EI in Prague, an American-style doctoral program in economics that educates the new generation of economists in the region. Chairman of the supervisory board of CSOB Bank and co-editor of Economics of Transition, he is also a fellow of the European Economic Association and research fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research (London) and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn).

The event is free and open to the public.

PLACE: Room 1636 International Institute, 1080 South University, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

SPONSORS: Center for European Studies-European Union Studies, Center for Russian and East European Studies, International Policy Center, and Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies

WEB: www.ii.umich.edu/ces-euc