Greg Ip, U.S. economics editor of The Economist, will give the BB&T Distinguished Lecture, “The Outlook for the Economy and Economic Policy” on Thursday, April 17, at 3:30 p.m. at the Inn at Virginia Tech’s Latham Ballroom.

The talk, hosted by the Pamplin College of Business and part of its BB&T Distinguished Lecture Series on Capitalism, is free and open to the public, no tickets required. Free parking is available at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center. Find more parking information online, or call 540-231-3200.

Based in Washington, D.C., Ip covers the economy, financial markets, and monetary, fiscal, and regulatory policy. He contributes to The Economist’s blog, “Free Exchange.”

He is a regular on-air contributor to CNBC and has also appeared on BBC, CNN, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, the PBS Newshour, Washington Week with Gwen Ifill, and National Public Radio. He is the author of "The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World."

He joined The Economist in July 2008 from The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently chief economics correspondent in Washington. He created the online blog, “Real Time Economics,” at the Journal. A native of Canada, Ip received a bachelor’s degree in economics and journalism from Carleton University.

Among Ip’s awards are the William Brewster Styles Award (with several colleagues) in 2008, from the Scripps Howard Foundation for coverage of the mortgage and housing crisis, and a 2005 Business Journalist of the Year award from the World Leadership Forum for his two-part series on the legacy of Alan Greenspan.

This is Ip’s second visit to Virginia Tech. He gave the BB&T Distinguished Lecture in 2011.

The BB&T lecture series is part of a Pamplin College teaching program to explore the foundations of capitalism and freedom. The program’s courses, undergraduate and graduate, examine alternative economic systems, including socialism and communism, and compare them with the economic solutions offered by free markets. For more information, please contact finance professor and program director Douglas Patterson.

The program was established in 2007 in the college’s finance department with a $1 million gift from BB&T Charitable Foundation.