Brief Bio

Peter Murrell, Professor at the University of Maryland and Chair of the Economics Department. He received his B.Sc.(Econ.) and M.Sc.(Econ.) from the London School of Economics and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His current research interests include privatization, institutional reform in transition, the interaction between firms and institutions, survey methods, professions, and self-regulation. He is currently on or has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Comparative Economics, Economic Systems, Economics of Planning, International Economics and Economic Policy, the Eastern Economic Journal, and Comparative Economic Studies. He is a Research Fellow of the Davidson Institute of the University of Michigan. Since 1991, he has worked on a variety of programs with the IRIS Center including participation in economic education, policy reform, and legal reform projects in Russia, Mongolia, and Romania.  He has also been a consultant for the World Bank, UNCTAD, UNDP, the MacArthur Foundation, PlanEcon, and the European Union. Recent publications include: "Competition and Privatization Amidst Weak Institutions: Evidence from Mongolia," (with James Anderson and Young Lee) Economic Inquiry, 2000, Assessing the Value of Law in Transition Economies, University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 2001, The Institutional Economics of Foreign Aid: A Principal-Agent Approach, (with Bertin Martens, Uwe Mummert, and Paul Seabright), Cambridge, 2002, "Enterprise Restructuring in Transition: A Quantitative Survey," (with Simeon Djankov) Journal of Economic Literature, September 2002, and "Institutions and Firms in Transition Economies," in the Handbook of New Institutional Economics.