Lawrence H. White is Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, USA. He specialises in monetary theory and banking history. He is best known for his research on free banking, which finds that free-market monetary arrangements are stable and efficient. He also works on the history of economic thought.

His presentation will offer highlights from his latest book, The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which has been described as "one of those rare books that makes the history of economic thought an intellectual adventure while remaining highly relevant to the issues and controversies of the present day."

Professor White received his B.A. from Harvard and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been a Visiting Professor at Queen's University Belfast, a visiting lecturer at the Swiss National Bank, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University.