Vernon L. Smith

Member of the Board of Advisors, Independent Institute; Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences; Professor of Economics and Law, the George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics, and the Founding Director of the Economic Science Institute at Chapman University

Vernon L. Smith

Vernon L. Smith is a member of Independent Institute’s Board of Advisors, Professor of Economics and Law, the George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics, and the Founding Director of the Economic Science Institute at Chapman University. He completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, his master’s degree in economics at the University of Kansas, and his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University. He has authored or co-authored more than 250 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics and experimental economics. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneering work in experimental economics.

Dr. Smith serves or has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Science, Economic Theory, Economic Design, Games and Economic Behavior, and Journal of Economic Methodology. He is past President of the Public Choice Society, Economic Science Association, Western Economic Association and Association for Private Enterprise Education. Previous faculty appointments include the University of Arizona, Purdue University, Brown University, University of Massachusetts and George Mason University. 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.

His books include Papers in Experimental Economics, Bargaining and Market Behavior, in 2000, and Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms. He has received an honorary Doctor of Management degree from Purdue University, and is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Smith is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, an Andersen Consulting Professor of the Year, and 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.

He is a contributing author (with Steven Rassenti and Bart Wilson) to the Independent Institute book, Electric Choices: Competition and the Future of Electric Power, edited by Andrew N. Kleit.

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