Biography

Wouter Dessein is the Eli Ginzberg Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. He served as chair of the Economics division from 2017 until 2021 and as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization from 2013 until 2019. He is also an Associate Editor of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. Dessein's research interests center on the economics of organizations: the allocation of decision-rights in organizations, the organizational structure of multi-divisional firms, the role of managers in setting firm strategy, and the impact of corporate leaders on the long-term performance of firms. His research has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Finance. At Columbia, he teaches a popular elective on the `Economics of Strategic Behavior', a course which examines the underlying economics of successful business strategy. Prior to joining the Columbia Business School faculty in July 2008, Dessein was an assistant and associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, where he taught Competitive Strategy and Organizational Strategy. Dessein earned a Bachelor in management and applied sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 1997, and a Ph.D. in economics from Toulouse University and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, in 2000.