Economics

Keynote speaker

LEE J. ALSTON, Indiana University, Bloomington

Lee Alston is the Ostrom Chair and Professor of Economics at the University of Indiana, where he earned his B.A. in 1973. In 1978 he completed his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Washington. He began his academic career at Williams College, and also held positions at the University of Illinois and the University of Colorado before accepting the Ostrom Chair. Professor Alston is the President-elect of the Economic History Association and was the President of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics in 2006-07. He has authored numerous books and articles on topics in economic history and institutional economics and been invited to lecture at universities across the globe.  

Featured speakers

F. ANDREW HANSSEN, Clemson University

F. Andrew Hanssen is Professor of Economics at Clemson University and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for New Institutional Economics. Hanssen holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, and MBA, MA, and BA degrees from Johns Hopkins. Prior to Clemson, he held positions at Montana State University, Colby College, and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. He has published widely in the areas of law and economics, economic history, and the economics of the sports and entertainment industries.

PHILLIP E. KEEFER, Inter American Development Bank

Phil Keefer is Principal Economic Advisor for Institutions for Development at The inter-American Development Bank.  He has also held positions as Research Economist at The World Bank, lecturer and Associate Director of the IRIS Center at the University of Maryland, and economic advisor to Hernando de Soto, President of the Instituto Libertad y Democracia in Peru.  He is widely published in the areas of political economy and development economics and has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Policy  and the World Bank Economic Review .  He recently served as Vice President of the American Political Science Association.  Dr. Keefer earned his B.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1991) in economics at Washington University. 

GARY LIBECAP, University of California, Santa Barbara

Gary Libecap is Professor of Corporate Environmental Management at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Department of Economics at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He has also held positions at the University of Arizona, Texas A&M, the University of New Mexico, and as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge.  He is past president of the Economic History Association, the Western Economics Association International, and the International Society for the New Institutional Economics. He is a renowned scholar of economic history, institutions, and environmental issues, and has served on the editorial boards of numerous academic journals.

JOHN V. C. NYE, George Mason University

John Nye is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Prederic Bastiat Chair in Political Economy, Mercatus Center. He holds a joint appointment as International Academic Advisor, Laboratory for the Institutional Analysis of Reform at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Prior to his appointment at George Mason, he was Professor of Economics at Washington University, his first academic position after completing his Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 1985. He has published widely in the areas of political economy and economic history, and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals. He is a founding member of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics.

JOHN JOSEPH WALLIS, University of Maryland

John Wallis is Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. He has held visiting positions at Yale, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago. He has authored dozens of articles in economic history and political economy. His most recent book, Violence and Social orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (2009), with Douglass North and Barry Weingast, has been translated into six languages. In addition, he has created two significant databases, on American government finances and American state constitutions. The former is the most comprehensive historical collection of data on state and local government finances available.