Jan Švejnar

Jan Svejnar is the James T. Shotwell Professor of Global Political Economy and Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University. He focuses his research on the effects of government policies on firms, labor and capital markets; corporate, national, and global governance and performance; and entrepreneurship. Professor Svejnar is also a founder and Chairman of CERGE-EI in Prague (an American-style Ph.D. program in economics that educates economists for Central-East Europe and the Newly Independent States) and he serves as co-editor of Economics of Transition. He is a Fellow of the European Economic Association and Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research (London) and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn. From 1992 to 1997, Professor Svejnar served as the Founding Director of the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He also served as Co-Director of the Transition Programme at the Center for Economic Policy Research in London, Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Governing Board member of the European Economic Association, and Economic Advisor to President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. In 2008 he was one of two presidential candidates in the Czech Republic.

He is the author and editor of a number of books and has published widely in academic, policy, and practitioner-oriented journals. Prior to joining Columbia University in 2012, Professor Svejnar taught at the University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, and Cornell University. He received his B.S. from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.