Financial Contracting

Oliver Hart is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has been teaching since 1993. He is also Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University (1974), MA in economics from Warwick University (1972) and a BA in mathematics from Cambridge University (1969). His previous teaching affiliations include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics and Cambridge and Essex Universities.

The professional contributions of Professor Hart have been recognized by a long list of honors. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been granted honorary doctorates from the Free University of Brussels and the University of Basel. He has delivered major lectures at universities and conferences around the world, including the 1988 Fisher-Schultze Lecture of the Econometric Society.

Professor Hart has served on the Executive Committee and on the Council of the Econometric Society and as director and committee member of other boards and organizations. His active editorial services have been used by the Journal of Economic Perspectives, The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance, Games and Economic Behavior, Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Economic Theory.

The main research of Professor Hart is on contract theory, the theory of the firm, and corporate finance. He is the author of the book Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure published by Oxford University Press, and has written numerous articles published in the leading scientific journals, as well as in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.