Named for economist and sixth Beloit College President Miller Upton, the Upton Forum on the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations is Beloit’s premier residency program in economics, featuring panel discussions and a keynote address by the Upton Scholar.

Though the forum events last for only one week, students are immersed in the theories and work of the Upton Scholar well before the slated campus visit. Seniors in the department of economics and management participate in a seminar course built around the ideas and research of that year’s Upton Scholar, so that they will be able to engage the scholar on a deeper level.

Residents

Giovanni Peri

2021

Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis, and Founder and Director of the Global Migration Center.

James Heckman

2019

Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago.

Dani Rodrik

2018

Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Michael Greenstone

2017

Previous chief economist for President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

2016

A well-known economist and historian and rhetorician, she has written 17 books and around 400 scholarly pieces on topics ranging from technical economics and statistical theory to transgender advocacy and the ethics of the bourgeois virtues.

Yasheng Huang

2015

The International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business, Professor of Global Economics and Management, and Associate Dean for International Programs and Action Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Robert N. Stavins

2014

One of the world’s leading thinkers on climate change policy whose research focuses on diverse areas of environmental economics and policy.

James D. Gwartney

2013

The co-author of the annual report, Economic Freedom of the World and holds the Gus A. Stavros Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida State University, where he directs the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education.

Timur Kuran

2012

professor of economics and political science and the Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University.

Joel Mokyr

2011

Specializes in economic history and the economics of technological change and population change, is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University.

Elinor Ostrom

2011

Became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics when she received the honor and was a longtime faculty member at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Israel Kirzner

2010

Emeritus Professor of Economics at New York University and a leading figure in the Austrian school of economics.

Hernando de Soto

2009

President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru Focusing on economic reforms that will encourage capital formation among the poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet bloc.

Douglass North

2008

Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and acted as economic consultant to the governments of Russia, Argentina, Peru, and the Czech Republic.