W. Michael Cox is Director of the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom, a research institute within Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business. An accomplished public speaker, Dr. Cox has an uncanny talent for blending astute economic analysis, independent research and a common-sense communication style. He has been keynote speaker at events hosted by a variety of organizations?including Wells Fargo, Met Life, PepsiCo, Energy Future Holdings, UBS, Gen Re, Orix, Jackson National Life Insurance, R.W. Baird & Co., and the Dallas Citizens Council.

Dr. Cox may be best-known for celebrating capitalism's capacity to deliver economic progress and raise living standards. His recent work focuses on the new businesses models arising from the globalization of the labor force and the emerging power of India and China. He's been examining the policies that foster growth and the challenges facing the U.S. economy as it attempts to pull out of a severe recession. No matter what the subject, his PowerPoint shows are the best in the business.

Dr. Cox is former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where he served for 25 years advising the bank's presidents on monetary and other economic policies. He holds the distinction of being the Federal Reserve System's only Chief Economist in history. In 2009, Dr. Cox retired from the Fed and became director of the O'Neil Center, which focuses on the study and teaching of how competitive market forces impact freedom and prosperity in the global economy.

A native of Little Rock, Ark., Dr. Cox earned his doctorate at Tulane University. His thirty-five years of college teaching experience include stints at Virginia Tech, the University of Rochester and Southern Methodist University. He is Past President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, a CATO Institute Adjunct Scholar, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, Senior Fellow at the Dallas Fed's Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute and a Distinguished Scholar of Hendrix College, his undergraduate alma mater. Dr. Cox is also President and CEO of W. Michael Cox and Associates, LLP, a Dallas-based private consulting group.

Cox is author of Myths of Rich and Poor, a book nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He's currently working on a book titled The Imagination Age, which will explore the next phase of America's economic evolution. In addition to his publications in scholarly journals, Cox has written a series of 17 "annual report" essays that explain the inner workings of American capitalism. Cox has written numerous articles for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily, Leadership Excellence magazine and D CEO magazine.

The media rely on Dr. Cox's ability to make plain sense out of difficult economic issues. He is a frequent guest on national radio, television and Internet programs, including Fox News, PBS' Ideas in Action, ABC's John Stossel program, CNN, C-SPAN, ReasonTV, Voice of America, and numerous talk-radio programs. He and his works have appeared in virtually every major newspaper and magazine worldwide.

"Six Economic Themes for the Decade Ahead"

If America's Great Recession made anything clear, it's that the 1982-2007 boom has ended and a new era has begun. What is that era and how will it compare to times past? What opportunities lie ahead in a decidedly different economy?

Make no mistake: the quarter century from November 1982 to November 2007 was unique. During those 300 months, we had just 16 months of recession - a slight 5% downtime. The DJIA rose from a low of 772 in 1982 to 14,280 in 2007. Growth was everywhere and strong.

The first step on a new path to prosperity lies in understanding where we've been, what just happened and what lies ahead. This presentation looks at the nation's six main economic drivers - technology, globalization, inflation, consumerism, credit and government - and shows how they compare in the decade ahead to times past. By looking long term again we can see where the opportunity lies in an expanding global economy with 3 billion new consumers...and more.

"The Imagination Age: Fourth Wave of American Progress"

"The Bunk Stops Here: Revealing America's Silent Boom"

"Second Great Paradigm Shift - Opportunities and Risk"

Dr. Cox will reveal how America is going through a second great paradigm shift - a period of rapid technological progress that will make the world tomorrow as different from today as the world after electricity was different from that before. Electricity (the causal discovery of the first great paradigm shift) spawned numerous "technology spillovers" - the automobile, airplane, telephone, radio and refrigerator to name just a few - industries which eventually became the centerpiece of the 20th century economy. Similarly today, the microprocessor is spawning numerous waves of technology spillovers - personal computers (the 1970s), smart products and software (1980s), the Internet (1990s), Genomics (2000s) and Nanotechnology (2010s) - creating industries which will cast the mold of our 21st century economy. In all likelihood, today's economic revolution will have implications well into the future, with fast growth rates of productivity and GDP, lower inflation, tight labor markets and unprecedented gains in living standards. However, as is always the case in times of profound transformation, there will be enormous economic "churn" where many existing industries and jobs will fall by the wayside while other new ones are emerging to take their place. Our times offer tremendous opportunity but also unprecedented risk. Considering this, it is only by gaining a solid understanding of the present and a clear vision of the future as they exist in the context of the past that we can anticipate how the economy is likely to unfold in the coming years. This knowledge is both your best defense and your best offense in formulating sound business and investment strategies.

"The Future Is Just A Little Behind Schedule: What happened to the New Economy?"

Increasingly powerful computers, the Internet, broadband transmission lines and wireless communications promised to deliver an age of miracles. New Economy devotees touted technology's capacity to change the very rules of economic life. America, at the epicenter of the new age, stood on the verge of an era of faster growth. Recession, inflation, layoffs, budget deficits and the other ills of the old order would become the stuff of dry, dusty history texts. But then the bubble burst. Prices plunged on Wall Street, making penny stocks out of once-high flying technology shares. Venture capitalists stopped throwing money at any business plan containing e-commerce, e-publishing or e-whatever. Dotcoms, once floating on a sea of cash, went belly-up by the hundred. Jobs disappeared, along with the overnight millionaires, stock options and corporate concierges that made us all envy those 20-somethings who struck it rich so easily. After the fall, most of America lost faith in the New Economy, concluding that it had been a mirage, a modern-day replay of Holland's 18th Century tulip mania. The nation now looks back on those heady times as a frenzied period that ultimately led to recession and lost jobs. Is The New Economy dead? Not by a long shot. Despite the turmoil of the past two years, it's very much alive. What's been lost in the mayhem has been a reckless euphoria that spawned silly business practices. And that isn't such a bad thing. The technology didn't go away. All the wonderful possibilities that loomed in the bullish heyday of the New Economy still remain ahead of us. History tells us that new technologies, once unleashed, grind inexorably forward. They don't always progress in a straight line. The road to the future often has potholes and detours. Skeptics should remember this: Less than three decades ago, the personal computer was little more than an idea. Today, 60 percent of U.S. households own one (or more), 50 million are sold annually, consumers have 250,000 software programs from which to choose, and the nation employs 2.7 million computer programmers and scientists. Just a decade ago, the ARPANET connected a handful of scientists and government workers. Today's Internet hosts 150 million, with worldwide e-commerce revenues reaching $1.2 trillion in 2001. Ebay Inc., the worlds busiest e-commerce site, traded $9 billion in goods and services in 2001 alone. As these examples testify, today's economy can change, and fast. Yet, still the Internet revolution is less than three percent complete, according to Michael R. Nelson of IBM Corporation. Most of the rest of the world still doesn't own computers. There is much more of the New Economy yet to come, not just in these areas but in a number of others. Fully 25 new technologies for the next 25 years. The New Economy technology will deliver as advertised: The future is just a little behind schedule.

Watch Michael Cox on Fox News, Tax Lesson from The Lone Star State

Read Michael Cox's article, Ascension of DFW

Read Michael Cox's Dallas Morning News article, Embrace Growth

Read Michael Cox's Dallas Morning News article, Other Cities' Struggles Highlight North Texas' Appeal

Read Michael Cox's article, Six Economic Themes for the Decade Ahead

Read Michael Cox's Leadership Excellence article, Globalization's Upside

Read Michael Cox's New York Times article, An Order of Prosperity, to Go

Read Michael Cox's SMU Professor biography