Feb. 8, 2012 - The C.D. Howe Institute is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. John Curtis as a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Institute, specializing in international trade and economic policy.
"Dr. Curtis' extensive experience in trade policy, through his government and academic roles, will be a tremendous addition to the Institute's International Economic Policy program," said Finn Poschmann, Vice President, Research, at the Institute. Dr. Curtis will take a seat as a member of the Advisory Council for that program.
Dr. Curtis brings over forty years of experience to the Institute in the fields of international trade, investment, finance, and innovation. Trained at the University of British Columbia and at Harvard, where he received a Ph.D. in Economics, he worked first at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, D.C., and subsequently in the Government of Canada. Among his assignments were Economic Briefing Officer to the Prime Minister, Advisor to the Régie des mesures anti-inflationnistes, the first Coordinator of Regulatory Reform, the Canadian Intellectual Property Negotiator in the Canada-US Free Trade Negotiations, and the founding Chief Economist within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Dr. Curtis has taught part-time throughout his career, first at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, and later at the University of Ottawa, McGill University, and Queen's University as an Adjunct Professor. He is currently teaching a new, experimental course on international economic policy at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs of Carleton University.
He has written extensively on international trade and related matters from a public policy perspective and, since leaving government service, has chaired Statistics Canada's Advisory Committee on International Trade.
He also spent several years working in the non-governmental policy research world, as Director of the International Economics Program at the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) in the early 1980s, and more recently as a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
Dr. Curtis has remained a strong advocate for improving public understanding of economic policy, a core objective of the Institute. His long standing interest in Asia, including his having served as the founding Chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's Economic Committee, and his focus on relating the domestic economy to Canada's international economic interests and competitiveness, will be central to Dr. Curtis' work at the Institute.
For more information contact: James Fleming, Director of Publications and Media, C.D. Howe Institute: (416) 865-1904