Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist, will discuss the estimated half-trillion-dollar cost of the nation’s opioid crisis in the inaugural Murray Weidenbaum Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 12, in Anheuser-Busch Hall’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom.
The lecture, sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, is free and open to the public. Registration is not required, but registrants will receive driving directions, parking instructions and other information prior to the event.
Krueger will discuss his highly cited work on “economics and the opioid crisis” and provide insight into how the crisis has affected the U.S. workforce. The Council of Economic Advisers estimates the national economic cost of opioid abuse reached more than half a trillion dollars in 2015, a year in which 33,091 opioid-involved overdose deaths were reported in the United States.
Krueger served as chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and as a Cabinet member from 2011-13. He also served as assistant secretary for economic policy and chief economist of the U.S. Treasury Department in 2009-10 and as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor in 1994-95.
The memorial lecture is intended to be an annual event honoring Weidenbaum, the center’s namesake and founding director and a member of the university’s economics faculty from 1964 until his death in 2014.