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Vernon Smith

Class of 2012-13

Vernon Smith
Vernon Smith

Chapman University
Nobel Prize in Economics
National Academy of Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Vernon L. Smith holds joint appointments with the Argyros School of Business and Economics and the School of Law and helps operate the new Economic Science Institute at Chapman University. Smith was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking work in experimental economics and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Smith earned his bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, his master’s in economics from the University of Kansas, and his doctorate in economics at Harvard University. 

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 of Private Enterprise Education. He received the California Institute of Technology’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 on the National Electric Reliability Council. 

Smith has authored or co-authored more than 250 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics, and experimental economics. He serves or has served on the board of editors of the American Economic ReviewThe Cato JournalJournal 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. He 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 University, Brown University, the University of Massachusetts, and George Mason University, where he was a professor of economics and law prior to joining the faculty at Chapman University. Smith 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.

In 1991, the Cambridge University Press published Smith’s “Papers in Experimental Economics,” and in 2000, a second collection of more recent papers, “Bargaining and Market Behavior.” Cambridge published his “Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms” in January 2008. Smith has received an honorary doctor of management degree from Purdue University, and is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Smith will visit Texas A&M on two occasions and offer lectures on economics. These lectures will be relevant to the current international economic challenges.

For more updated information: https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/files/curriculum-vita/Smith-Vernon-CV.pdf