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Lester C. Thurow

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Lester Carl Thurow was an American political economist, former MIT Sloan School of Management dean, and author of books on economic topics. Born in Livingston, Montana, Thurow received his B.A. in political economy from Williams College in 1960. He was in Theta Delta Chi and Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and a Tyng Scholar. After being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, graduating in 1962 with first-class honors. 

He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1964. Thurow was on the board of directors of Analog Devices, Grupo Casa Autrey, E-Trade, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. Thurow was one of the founders of the Economic Policy Institute in 1986. Thurow was an economics columnist for, among others, the Boston Globe and USA Today. 

He was an economics columnist for and on the New York Times editorial board. He was a contributing editor to Newsweek, where he earned the 1982 Gerald Loeb Award for Columns/Editorials. Thurow was a longtime advocate of a political and economic system of the Japanese and European type, in which governmental involvement in the economy's direction is far more extensive than in the United States. 

This model has come to be known as the "Third Way" philosophy. Thurow supported a more universal patent system as a requirement for a knowledge-based economy, where governments would assess the value of infringements of intellectual property against their companies by competitors in foreign jurisdictions and allow these companies to match that. Thurow died at the age of 77 on March 25, 2016.

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Generating Inequality

Paul Graham
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