Professor Edward C. Prescott holds the W.P. Carey Chair in economics at Arizona State University and is the Senior Monetary Adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Prior to joining the Arizona State University faculty, he held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Prescott was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Finn Kydland "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles". In addition to this honour, he was awarded the 2002 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, and elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1980, and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow for 1974-75.

Professor Prescott's contributions go well beyond macroeconomics. He is noted for his contribution to general equilibrium theory, in particular recursive competitive equilibrium and the extension of valuation equilibrium theory to an important class of environments with private information. He is also noted for his contributions to financial economics and banking. In his and Stephen Parente's book Barrier to Riches, the thesis is developed that countries are poor because they effectively erect barriers to efficient production.

Besides co-editing three books and co-authoring one, Professor Prescott has published over 100 scientific papers. He received a B.A. in mathematics from Swarthmore in 1962, an M.S. in operations research from Case Western University in 1963, and a PhD in economics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1967.