Media Contact:
Carrie Conko
Director of Communications
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Office: 703-993-4899
Email: cconko@gmu.edu
Vernon Smith
Professor of Economics and LawBoard Member
vsmith2@gmu.edu
Biography
Vernon Smith, Nobel Prize winner in economics, 2002, is a professor of economics and law at George Mason University, a research scholar in the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a fellow of the Mercatus Center. He also serves on the Mercatus Center's Board of Directors.
Professor Smith serves or has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, the Cato Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Science, Economic Theory, Economic Design, Games and Economic Behavior, and the Journal of Economic Methodology.
Professor Smith is past president of the Public Choice Society, the Economic Science Association, the Western Economic Association and the Association for Private Enterprise Education. Previous faculty appointments include the University of Arizona, Purdue, Brown University and the University of Massachusetts. He has been a Ford Foundation Fellow, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology.
Professor Smith is a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association, an Andersen Consulting Professor of the Year, the 1995 Adam Smith award recipient conferred by the Association for Private Enterprise Education. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995, and received CalTech's distinguished alumni award in 1996. He has served as a consultant on the privatization of electric power in Australia and New Zealand and participated in numerous private and public discussions of energy deregulation in the United States. In 1997 he served as a Blue Ribbon Panel Member, National Electric Reliability Council.
Professor Smith earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cal Tech, and his PhD in economics from Harvard. He has authored or co-authored over 200 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics, and experimental economics.
