A discussion on the Swiss Economic Miracle: How Switzerland achieved 'the greatest good for the greatest number', and will it continue?

James Breiding is the co-author with Gerhard Schwarz of a recently published book “The Swiss Economic Miracle”. In his current position, he is responsible for the day-to-day management of Naissance, a Swiss-based hedge fund and for identification and execution of its investment projects.He served in prior positions as a director of Rothschild Corporate Finance and as vice president of Bank Julius Baer responsible for alternative investments. He qualified as a chartered accountant and served as a Senior Manager with Price Waterhouse Coopers. He graduated with a masters degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and IMD, Lausanne. He was awarded a fellowship from Harvard’s Center for International Development.

Douglas Sears is Associate Provost and Assistant to the President for Outreach and Special Initiatives at Boston University, overseeing a variety of University initiatives and projects. In July of 2008 he was named Director of the Division of Military Education, the unit at Boston University that provides academic oversight and administrative support for the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Boston University hosts all three branches of the United States armed forces. Before coming to Boston University, Dr. Sears served as an American diplomat in the U.S. embassies in Switzerland and the Philippines, earning tenure and the Department of State’s Meritorious Honor Award. He is currently a vice president of the board of the American-Swiss Foundation. In May 2009 Dr. Sears was awarded the Stratton Prize for Intercultural Achievement, in recognition of his work in American-Swiss relations as well as his contributions to education reform. Dr. Sears holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University, M.A. in Government from Lehigh University, and a B.A. in History from Bates College.

Horst von Buttlar is the Bucerius Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Originally from Hamburg, Germany, he attended Flager College in St. Augustine, Florida. Between 1996 and 2001 he studied Slavonic studies, political science, and history in Heidelberg, Berlin and St. Petersburg, Russia. After graduation he moved to Munich to train as a journalist at the Deutsche Journalistenschule. In 2004, he joined the Financial Times Deutschland. Initially, he worked on the business paper's commentary pages, and since 2007, he has been features editor. In his research project at CES he examines different patterns of crisis management during the financial crisis and how there are due to a country's history, political institutions and "collective memory".

Tobias Schulze-Cleven is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.  He also holds a postdoctoral appointment sponsored by the German Research Foundation at the University of Bamberg and teaches courses on comparative politics and political economy at Zeppelin University. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2009. His research has focused on institutional changes in advanced democracies' labor market regimes and education systems over the last three decades. In his dissertation, Schulze-Cleven portrays diverging pathways to higher labor market flexibility in Germany and Denmark. In a recent policy piece, he analyzes what US policymakers could learn from European experiences with labor market adjustment. While at CES, Schulze-Cleven seeks to consolidate this work in a manuscript on the politics of labor market reform in Europe.



Event followed by a Swiss style reception.

Seats are limited, please RSVP