- 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.
He focuses his research on (i) the effects of government policies on firms,
labor and capital markets; (ii) corporate, national, and global governance and
performance; and (iii) entrepreneurship, innovation and investment.
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. 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.
