BIO
John Van Reenen is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and the Director of the Centre for Economic Performance, Europe’s leading applied economics research center. In 2009 he received the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, bestowed every two years on the best economist in Europe under the age of 45. He is also a member of the British Academy.
He has published over fifty papers spanning all areas of economics, with particular attention to the causes and consequences of innovation. His most recent work sets out to explain why there are so many “bad bosses” across the private and public sectors (in hospitals for instance) and what can be done to improve management quality and productivity.
Van Reenen has served as a senior advisor to the UK Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health, and the European Commission. Holder of a PhD from University College London, an MSc from LSE and a BA from the University of Cambridge, he has taught industrial economics, labor economics and econometrics at LSE, and been a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Princeton, and Denning Visiting Professor of Global Business and Economics at Stanford. He currently holds research positions with CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research), NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) and IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor).