Institute Professor Peter A. Diamond was the 2003–2004 James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award winner. In 2010, he shared the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in analysis of markets with search frictions. Among many other avenues of research he has pursued in his career, Professor Diamond helped develop studies from the late 1970s onward that examined the ways markets function over a period of time. Since then, this aspect of economic research—“search theory”—has been frequently applied to labor markets in an attempt to see how the needs of individuals and employers are met. Professor Diamond discussed in his Killian Lecture how economists think about Social Security and its effects on the economy, described current projections of Social Security’s financial problems, and offered proposals for restoring it to what is called “actuarial balance.”

• Read more at MIT News
• Lecture coverage by MIT News