With the formal introduction of the euro this year, economic relations between Europe and the United States are receiving even more attention than usual. On April 11 and 12, the Weatherhead Center co-sponsored an unusual conference with the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Business and Government. The title of the conference was “Transatlantic Perspectives on US-EU Economic Relations: Convergence, Conflict and Cooperation.” Indeed, in lively conversations the conference very much stressed both conflicts and possibilities for cooperation.

Over 50 participants, including twelve Weatherhead Center faculty associates and scholars, attended the two-day session that focused on corporate governance, trends in welfare systems and migration, comparative economic performance, the role of trade and international investment, and the euro in the context of a new international financial architecture. Twelve formal papers were presented that will be published in book form in the next year.
The faculty chairs for the conference were Robert Lawrence from the Kennedy School and Michael Landesmann, director of the Vienna Institute for International Economics. Participants included the chief economist from the OECD, several representatives from the EU, the vice-president of the European Investment Bank, the former president of Fidelity Management and Research, the vice-chairman of Goldman-Sachs International, the former chancellor of Austria, Franz Vranitzky, several former economic advisers to the U.S. government, and faculty members from nine countries.

The occasion for the conference was the tenth anniversary of the Schumpeter Program at Harvard. Joseph Schumpeter, of course, was the pre-eminent Austrian economist who left Austria to teach at Harvard and shaped twentieth century thinking about entrepreneurial ideas. The Schumpeter Program brings up to six graduate students plus one senior research fellow to Harvard each year. Weatherhead Center executive director Jim Cooney (then at the Kennedy School), and Charles S. Maier, professor of history, member of the Weatherhead Center’s executive committee and former director of the Center for European Studies, initiated the program with the Austrian government in 1992. The Weatherhead Center continues to manage the Schumpeter Research Scholars program. Most of the former Schumpeter Fellows attended the April conference, including Hansjoerg Klausinger, this year’s Schumpeter Fellow.