Thurow, Lester (Carl) (1938– )

US economist. He gained wide exposure in both the print and sound media. In The Zero-Sum Society (1980) he argued that the USA was losing ground against its economic competitors. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1968) and was an economic adviser to Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972. He was dean of the Sloan School of Management at MIT 1987–93 and from 1993 was professor of management and economics at the same institution.

Thurow was born in Livingston, Montana. He was a Rhodes scholar 1960–62 and earned his PhD at Harvard in 1964.