Andrei Shleifer 101: Who is the Famous Economics Professor? In this article on Zatrun.com, we will cover in detail everything you need to know about Andrei Shleifer, the famous American professor that our readers are curious about.
Who is Andrei Shleifer?
Andrei Shleifer was born in the Soviet Union to a Jewish family. in 1976, as a teenager, he moved to Rochester, New York. There he attended an inner-city school and learned English by watching episodes of Charlie’s Angels. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in mathematics in 1982 and went on to receive his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1986.
While at Harvard, he took Math 55 with Brad DeLong and met his future co-author and mentor Lawrence Summers. he has been a tenured professor in Harvard’s Department of Economics since 1991 and held the title of Whipple Jones Professor of Economics from 2001 to 2006. Prior to his time at Harvard, he taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and briefly at Princeton University.
Andrei Shleifer is a well-known economist and Professor of Economics who has been teaching at Harvard University since 1991. Shleifer has made significant contributions to the field of economics, especially in the areas of corporate finance, financial markets, and transition economics, which earned him the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal in 1999.
IDEAS/RePEc ranks him as the second best economist in the world and number one on the list of “The Most Cited Scientists in the Field of Economics and Business”. In addition to his academic work, Shle October served as the project director for the Russian aid project of the Harvard Institute for International Development.
His Contributions
Andrei Shleifer, a Russian-American economist and Harvard professor, has made important contributions to various fields of economics. While his early work focused on behavioural finance, he later authored influential articles on political economy, economic development, and transition economics. Shleifer, fellow economist Kevin M. Murphy and Robert W. He collaborated with Vishny, and together they wrote a paper entitled “Industrialisation and the Big Push”, which was considered by Paul Krugman to be an important breakthrough in the theory of development.
Shleifer has also contributed significantly to the study of corporate governance, together with co-authors Rafael La Porta, Simeon Djankov and Florencio Lopez de Silanes. In recent years, Shleifer’s research has focused on the theory of a country’s ‘legal origin’. Its legal tradition is an important determining factor for its development, especially financial development. His Clark Medal citation described him as an “excellent economist” who emphasised fundamental economic mechanisms, studied the evidence, and explored the relevant role of markets, institutions, and governments.
His Other Works
In 1994, Andrei Shleifer founded a money management firm called LSV Asset Management in Chicago with academic colleagues and behavioural finance specialists Josef Lakonishok and Robert Vishny. According to the company’s website, as of February 2006, Shleifer was managing quantitative equity portfolios valued at about $50 billion, although he had sold his ownership stake.
In the early 1990s, Shleifer headed a Harvard project that invested U.S. government funds into the Russian economy under the auspices of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). He was a direct adviser to Anatoly Chubais, who managed the portfolio of ‘Russian assets’ or the State Property Management Committee) and was the main architect of Russia’s privatisation. Shleifer was also tasked with setting up a world-class stock exchange for Russia.
In 1996, complaints about the Harvard project led to a General Accounting Office investigation that resulted in Congress giving the Harvard Institute for International Development a key audit of the U.S. aid program. In 1997, after investigations revealed that senior HIID officials Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay had used their positions and insider information to profit from investments in Russian securities markets, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) cancelled most of its funding to Harvard.
In addition, the Institute of Law and Economics (LEI) was allegedly used to help Shleifer’s wife, Nancy Zimmerman, manage a hedge fund speculating on Russian bonds. In August 2005, Harvard University and the Department of Justice reached a $26.5 million settlement to end the university’s five-year lawsuit. Shleifer was required to pay $2 million in damages, although he did not admit to committing any crimes.
