Jan Svejnar

Focus areas: The effect of foreign investment on domestic firms, the effect of billionaires on economic performance, the determinants of corporate structure, ownership and performance, the effect of recession on wages and employment, global economic governance, economic policies, performance of countries at different levels of economic development 

On Leave for the 2024-2025 Academic Year

Jan Svejnar is the Richard N. Gardner Professor of Economics and International Affairs 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 MA-PhD 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. 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, editor of the Economics of Transition, 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, Jan Svejnar was the Everett E. Berg Professor of Business Administration and Director of the William Davidson Institute at the Ross School of Business, Professor of Economics, and Professor and Director of the International Policy Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Before Michigan, Jan Svejnar was professor at the University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University. He received his BS from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and his MA and PhD in Economics from Princeton University. He is the author and editor of a number of books and has published widely in academic, policy, and practitioner-oriented journals.

Education

• PhD in Economics, Princeton University
• MA in Economics, Princeton University
• BS, Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Affiliations

• Co-founder and Chairman, CERGE-EI
• Fellow, European Economic Association
• Center for Economic Policy Research
• Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn)

Honors and Awards

• IZA Prize in Labor Economics, 2015
• Neuron Prize for lifelong achievement from the Karel Janeček Endowment for Research and Science, 2012
• Re-elected Member of the Governing Council of the European Association of Comparative Economic Studies
• Re-elected Research Fellow, CEPR, London
• Recipient of the National Bank of Poland Research Fellowship Award