Director General of European Central Bank to give Oswald lecture at KU

LAWRENCE - Vitor Gaspar, director general of Directorate General Research at the European Central Bank will present a lecture, “The Conduct of Monetary Policy Over Time,” from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19, in Alderson Auditorium at the Kansas Union at the University of Kansas.

The lecture is part of the Oswald Speaker Series sponsored by the Department of Economics at KU. It is free and open to the public.

Following the lecture, there will be a reception for Gaspar from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Bruckmiller Room at the Adams Alumni Center.

Gaspar has been in his position with the European Central Bank since 1998. Before his appointment, Gaspar was director of research at the Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal). He was director of economic studies at the Portuguese Ministry of Finance and was personal representative of the Portuguese finance minister in the Intergovernmental Conference, which led to the Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union. He has taught in the economics department of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal.

William Barnett, distinguished professor of economics, invited Gaspar to KU. It is the last stop on Gaspar's visit to the United States, which includes stops in Boston and Washington, D.C. He will visit the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, Nov. 18.

The Oswald Speaker Series was made possible by the support of Charlie Oswald, a KU alumnus of the Department of Economics. The series, funded by part of a $10 million gift that Oswald made to KU, began in 2002. In its first two years, 30 prominent scholars have visited KU and 15 more have been invited to visit in its third year.