Edward W. Conard is an American businessman, author and scholar. He is a
''New York Times''-bestselling author of ''The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class'' and ''Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong;'' and a contributor to Oxford University Press' ''United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality.'' Conard is an adjunct fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
[ Previously, he was a managing director at Bain Capital, where he worked closely with former presidential candidate ]Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer serving as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts f ...
.
Early life and education
Conard grew up in the Detroit metropolitan area
The Detroit metropolitan area, often referred to as Metro Detroit, is a major metropolitan area in the U.S. State of Michigan, consisting of the city of Detroit and its surrounding area. There are varied definitions of the area, including the ...
and graduated from the University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
with a BSE in Operations Research
Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...
in 1978. He earned his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
in 1982.
Early career and Bain Capital
Prior to business school, Conard worked as an automotive engineer at Ford Motor Company. After graduating, he joined Bain & Company
Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and non-profit organizations. One of the Big Three management consultancies, Bain & Company was fou ...
, the Boston-based global management-consulting firm, eventually becoming a vice president and leading the firm's industrial practice.[
Conard left Bain in 1990 to become a director at Wasserstein Perella & Co., a boutique investment bank. At Wassernstein, he headed the firm's Transaction Development Group.][
Conard was a managing director at Bain Capital, the head of Bain's New York office and the leader of its industrial practice. He joined the firm in 1993 prior to the firm raising $300 million of private equity.] When Conard retired in 2007, Bain Capital managed $75 billion of capital and had offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Mumbai.[ His first acquisition was that of a pharmaceutical company for half a billion dollars. That same company later rose to more than $10 billion in value.
While at Bain Capital, Conard took ]Waters Corporation
Waters Corporation is a publicly traded Analytical Laboratory instrument and software company headquartered in Milford, Massachusetts. The company employs more than 7,800 people, with manufacturing facilities located in Milford, Taunton, Massachu ...
, DDI, ChipPac, Innophos, and Sensata public and sat on their boards of directors. He still sits on the board of Waters Corporation.
Writing, speaking, and scholar career
Conard is the author of two top-ten ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' bestsellers: ''Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong'' and ''The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class''; and a contributor to Oxford University Press' ''United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality.'' He became the tenth most searched author on Google in 2012 after publishing his first book. Conard joined the American Enterprise Institute as a visiting scholar in 2012. His work with AEI focuses on U.S. economic policy - in particular, on the effect of taxes, government policies, and finance on risk-taking and innovation.[
]
''Unintended Consequences''
Conard published ''Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong'' in May 2012. The book was featured on the cover of the ''New York Times Sunday Magazine'' and went on to become a ''New York Times'' top ten non-fiction bestseller.
While ''The New York Times'' predicted the book might become "the most hated book of the year,"[ leading economists such as Greg Mankiw, ]Andrei Shleifer
Andrei Shleifer ( ; born February 20, 1961) is a Russian-American economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1991. Shleifer was awarded the biennial John Bates Clark Medal in 1999 for his seminal works in ...
, Steven Levitt
Steven David Levitt (born May 29, 1967) is an American economist and co-author of the best-selling book ''Freakonomics'' and its sequels (along with Stephen J. Dubner). Levitt was the winner of the 2003 John Bates Clark Medal for his work in the ...
, Nouriel Roubini, Tyler Cowen, and Glenn Hubbard Glenn Hubbard may refer to:
*Glenn Hubbard (baseball) (born 1957), American baseball player
*Glenn Hubbard (economist) (born 1958), American academic specializing in tax policy and health care
See also
*Hubbard (surname) Hubbard is an English sur ...
publicly endorsed the book. In contrast to ''The New York Times'', ''The Wall Street Journal'' called the book "a full throttle defense of economic dynamism…refreshing at a time when so many take the failure of capitalism for granted." ''The New York Times'' described ''Unintended Consequences'' as "…arguing that growing income inequality shows the economy is working." Timothy Noah
Timothy Robert Noah (born 1958), an American journalist and author, is a staff writer at ''The New Republic.'' Previously he was labor policy editor for ''Politico'', a contributing writer at MSNBC.com, a senior editor of ''The New Republic'' ass ...
, the author of ''The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality'' noted: "the biggest surprise, on opening ''Unintended Consequences'', lies in discovering that this book isn't about income inequality at all." The book analyzes why the U.S. has outperformed other high-wage economies, explains the causes of the financial crisis, and makes recommendations for accelerating growth in its aftermath.[ Conard summarizes his book in a 23-minute video for The UP Experience.
Since its publication, Conard has made over 250 television appearances in which he has debated leading economists including ]Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...
, Joe Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...
, Alan Krueger
Alan Bennett Krueger (September 17, 1960 – March 16, 2019) was an American economist who was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served ...
, Austan Goolsbee
Austan Dean Goolsbee (born August 18, 1969) is an American economist and writer. He is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. , and Jared Bernstein; journalists including Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Rafiq Zakaria (; born 20 January 1964) is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN's ''Fareed Zakaria GPS'' and writes a weekly paid column for ''The Washington Post.'' He has been a columnist ...
, Chris Hayes, and Andrew Ross Sorkin; and politicians such as Barney Frank, Howard Dean, and Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Spitzer was b ...
. Conard also debated Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American comedian, political commentator, and television host. He hosted ''The Daily Show'', a satirical news program on Comedy Central, from 1999 to 2015 and now hosts ''Th ...
for 33 minutes, one of Stewart's longest interviews. The video of the debate has received nearly 100,000 views. He has also written op-eds for ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Washington Post'', ''Foreign Affairs'', ''Harvard Business Review'', ''Fortune'', and ''Politico'', among others.
''The Upside of Inequality''
Conard published ''The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class'' in September 2016. The book debuted at #8 on ''The New York Times'' top ten non-fiction list and reached #1 on ''The New York Times'' business book list.
''The Upside of Inequality'' was met with positive reviews, including former president of Harvard University and economist Larry Summers, a very tough critic on the other side of the aisle, blurbed "I profoundly disagree but respect the clarity with which he makes his case..." and called it "a very valuable contribution" that will "sharpen your thinking on critical economic issues." Noted economist Tyler Cowen who wrote on Bloomberg News: "Conard's central idea is that risk-bearing equity capital is the truly scarce asset in most economic situations, and economic analysis should adapt accordingly. He is very creative in seeing some of the implications of this view. I... found it very stimulating to ponder. It puts many of the pieces together in a new and different way." Harvard economist Greg Mankiw recommended Upside and interviewed Conard on C-SPAN. David Author, George Borjas, Larry Lindsey, and other prominent economists also praised it. ''National Review'' said the book is a "rousing defense of conservative beliefs about how markets and incentives drive prosperity."
Political activities
In March 2011, Conard made a $1 million U.S. dollar contribution to the super PAC promoting Mitt Romney's candidacy in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election
The 2012 United States presidential election was the 57th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, were re-el ...
through W Spann LLC W Spann LLC was a phantom company created at the behest of an originally unknown person by Boston lawyer Cameron Casey on March 15, 2011, apparently for the sole purpose of anonymously donating one million dollars to Restore Our Future, a Super PAC ...
, a shell corporation that rendered him anonymous and appeared to exist for the sole purpose of contributing to Romney's campaign. In August 2011, he came forward to quell the controversy that arose.
Personal life
Conard is married to Jill Davis
Jill A. Davis (born 1966) is an American author and television writer. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America. She was nominated for five Emmy awards for her six years of work as a writer for David Letterman. Her first novel, ''Girls' Po ...
, an author and former writer for the ''Late Show with David Letterman
The ''Late Show with David Letterman'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS, the first iteration of the The Late Show (franchise), ''Late Show'' franchise. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, and was produced by ...
''.
References
External links
Ed Conard official website
List of Ed Conard media appearances
List of Ed Conard op-ed articles
Ed Conard on The Daily Show with John Stewart
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conard, Edward
Bain Capital people
University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni
Harvard Business School alumni
Living people
1950s births
Ford people
American chief executives
American corporate directors
American male writers
American automotive engineers
Bain & Company employees