Contributor(s): Professor Robert J Gordon | Professor Gordon will examine the history of economic growth in the USA, and explore solutions needed to overcome the economic challenges of the future. Robert J Gordon is the Stanley G Harris Professor in the Social Sciences at Northwestern University and author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2014 he was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in recognition of a long career of outstanding contributions to scholarship, teaching, public service, and the economics profession. For more than three decades, he has been a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, which determines the start and end dates for recessions in the United States. Wouter Den Haan is Professor of Economics at LSE and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.