Jan Svejnar

Professor, Columbia University Scholars

Jan Svejnar is the James T. Shotwell Professor of Global Political Economy and Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University. 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). 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. He is also the author and editor of a number of books and has published widely in academic, policy, and practitioner-oriented journals.

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, President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, 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. He was honored with a Neuron Prize for lifelong achievement from the Karel Janeček Endowment for Research and Science in 2012 and the 2015 IZA Prize in Labor Economics from the Institute for the Study of Labor. In 2008 he was one of two presidential candidates in the Czech Republic.

Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia University, Svejnar was the Everett E. Berg Professor of Business Administration and Director of the William Davidson Institute at the Ross School of Business, as well as Professor and Director of the International Policy Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.  Before Michigan, Svejnar was professor at the 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. from Princeton University.