What if governments can't pay their debts?

The 2012 Condliffe Memorial Lecture in Economics at Canterbury will be held on Wednesday, 5 December, as part of the University of Canterbury's ongoing "What If?" lecture series. This year, we're pleased to host Professor John Cochrane.

Here's the announcement:

Please RSVP via the University's website.

Update: The University's RSVP process is more than a little cumbersome. If you can't make it work for you, send me an email at eric.crampton@canterbury.ac.nz and I'll make sure you get on the list.

The Economics Department is particularly proud of its Condliffe Lecture series. Prior years' speakers include:

• 2005: Jerry Hausman: Consumer benefits from increased competition in shopping outlets: Measuring the effect of Wal-Mart.
• 2006: Gene Grossman: Trading tasks: It's not wine for cloth anymore. 
• 2007: Mark Blaug: Congestion charges: the solution to traffic problems?
• 2008: Joel Slemrod: Tax policy in the real world
• 2009: Hal Varian: Computer-mediated transactions
• 2010: Charles Plott: The emergence of economics as a laboratory science
• 2011: Martin Weitzman: Why is the economics of climate change so difficult and controversial?
• 2012: John Cochrane: What if government's can't pay their debts?
• 2013: Ed Glaeser has accepted our invitation to be next year's Condliffe Memorial Lecturer. I'll hope that he'll be talking about his work on the economics of the city.