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Session 17: The Adam Smith Award Address
The NABE 25th annual Adam Smith Address Lecture will be given by William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In receiving this award, he follows his close colleagues and mentors Milton Friedman, Karl Brunner, and Alan Meltzer.
Presentations
William Poole's speech at St. Louis Fed web site.
Links of Interest
NABE Hall of Fame: Adam Smith Award
Speakers
William Poole
President and CEO
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
William Poole took office as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on March 23, 1998. He directs the activities of the Bank’s head office in St. Louis, as well as its three branches in Little Rock, Ark., Louisville, Ky., and Memphis, Tenn. In addition, he represents the Bank on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve’s chief monetary policymaking body. He chairs the Conference of Presidents’ Information Technology Oversight Committee.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, one of 12 regional Reserve banks, serves the Eighth Federal Reserve District. The regional Reserve banks, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., constitute the Federal Reserve System. As the nation’s central bank, the Fed is responsible for conducting monetary policy, supervising banks and operating the nation’s payments mechanism.
Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Mr. Poole was the Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University, Providence, R.I. He joined the faculty at Brown in 1974 and twice served as chairman of the economics department. He served on the economics faculty at The Johns Hopkins University from 1963 to 1969. He was inducted into The Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in May 2005.
Mr. Poole was a member of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1982 to 1985 during the first Reagan Administration and was a member of the Academic Advisory Panels of the Federal Reserve banks of New York and Boston. He was involved in a wide range of professional activities. He co-authored “Principles of Economics,” published in 1991, and authored “Money and the Economy: A Monetarist View,” published in 1978, as well as numerous scholarly papers published in professional journals.
Mr. Poole began his career in the Federal Reserve System at the Board of Governors in 1964 and worked as a senior economist there from 1969 to 1974. He also has been an advisor and consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and a visiting economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Born in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Poole spent his formative years in that city. He attended Swarthmore College, receiving an AB degree in 1959. He received MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago in 1963 and 1966, respectively. Swarthmore honored him with a Doctor of Laws degree in 1989.
He is a director of United Way of Greater St. Louis and member of the Webster University Board of Trustees. He was a member of the Chancellor’s Council of the University of Missouri-St. Louis 1999-2003.
Mr. Poole is an avid cyclist and sailor. He is married to Geraldine S. Poole; they have four sons.
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