Robert Zachary Lawrence, a former South African national, is the 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 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.
Other notable assignments
Senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution
Research Associate at Brookings, an instructor at Yale University
Chair for the Project on Middle East Trade at the Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Selected publication and citations
Books
Lawrence, Robert Z. Regionalism, Multilateralism, and Deeper Integration. The Brookings Institution, 1996.
Lawrence, Robert Z., and Ahmed Galal. Anchoring Reform with a US-Egypt Free Trade Agreement. Institute for International Economics, May 2005.
Bradford, Scott, and Robert Z. Lawrence. Has Globalization Gone Far Enough? The Costs of Fragmentation in OECD Markets. Institute for International Economics, 2004.
Robert Z. Lawrence. Crimes and Punishments? Retaliation under the WTO. Institute for International Economics, 2003.
Lawrence, Robert Z. "Inequality in America: The Recent Evidence." Cross-Border Human Resources, Labor and Employment Issues: Proceedings of the New York University 54th Annual Conference on Labor Law. Ed. Andrew P. Morriss, Samuel Estreicher. Kluwer Law International, June 2005, 581–88
Research papers/reports
Lawrence, Richard Z. "Recent US Free Trade Initiatives in the Middle East: Opportunities but no Guarantees." KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP06-050, December 2006.
Lawrence, Robert Z. "China and the Multilateral Trading System." KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP06-045, October 2006.
Lawrence, Robert Z., and Tatiana Rosito. "A New Compensation Mechanism for Preference Erosion in the Doha Round." KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP06-044, October 2006.
Lawrence, Robert Z., and Tatiana Rosito. "A New Compensation Mechanism for Preference Erosion in the Doha Round." Center for International Development Blue Sky Conference paper, September 2006.
Reviews
Lawrence, Robert Z. Comment on "Designing Policies to Capture Beneficial Effects" in Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Development?, Ed. Theodore H. Moran, Edward M. Graham, Magnus Blomström. 2005: 367–71.
