The Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania has alumni from both our undergraduate and graduate programs. You are part of an incredibly diverse and dynamic group of individuals working in academia in leading universities, in research in both public and private sectors, and in industry around the world. We are always interested in hearing from our alumni and look forward to sharing in your successes.
Welcome to the Alumni section of our website.
Here we hope to share information with you, our alumni, about what is happening in the department and what your fellow alumnus are doing.
We are exploring a number of ways of communicating and would be interested in your thoughts.
Would you be interested in getting more involved? Helping current students or recent graduates? Are there online networks (such as LinkedIn) or resources that might be useful to you?
To enter or update information about yourself in the Penn Alumni Online Community, please visit QuakerNet.
Let us know.
From Friends and Alumni
"Besides being taught by prominent faculty after we entered the Penn Economics Ph.D. program in 1972, we were fortunate to have many outstanding classmates. It was apparent then that many would have distinguished careers. This week, one of our cohort, Ignazio Visco, was appointed as the Governor of Italy's central bank. Ignazio's breadth of experience—more than 30 years at Banca d'Italia and five years as the OECD's chief economist—have provided him with the monetary, fiscal, and structural background that Italy needs in its and the Euro area's sovereign debt crisis. Indeed, Italy's Economy Ministry indicated that Ignazio's recent role as a liaison between the Italian Treasury and Banca d'Italia was one reason for his selection.
"Zeti Aziz was the first of our classmates to head a central bank. She has been the Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia since 2000. In addition, since 2008, Zeti has been the Chairperson of the Bank for International Settlements' Asian Consultative Group.
"Zeti was first appointed as Acting Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia during the Asian financial crisis of 1998. Her leadership and reforms helped restore financial stability to her country and the region.
"Ignazio takes over the helm of Banca d'Italia during equally turbulent times. We wish him as much success in assisting to restore stability to the Euro area as Zeti has had in Malaysia."
- Michael Marrese (Ph.D., 1977) 
J. P. Morgan Research
- John A. Weymark (Ph.D., 1977) 
Economics Department, Vanderbilt University
"When I was at Penn, first year graduate students in the Graduate Group in Economics were required to take Macro, Micro, Development Economics and Introductory Econometrics. For the first year PhD students in the early 1970’s, the reasonably arduous class schedule was taught by professors Phelps, Sargent, Williamson, and Klein. They were tough, but approachable anytime in their offices. They even displayed a sense of humor. More importantly, Larry Klein received the Nobel prize in Economics in 1980, Ned Phelps in 2006, Ollie Williamson in 2009 and Tom Sargent this year, I am certain that this must be unique for any university in the world."
- Kurt Kendis
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| Lawrence Klein 1980 Nobelist |
Edmund Phelps 2006 Nobelist |
Oliver Williamson 2009 Nobelist |
Thomas Sargent 2011 Nobelist |