Stergios Skaperdas, economics professor, has been appointed to a five-year term as the Clifford S. Heinz Chair. Established in 1988 by the UC Regents, the honor recognizes an outstanding UC Irvine scholar who studies the economics of peace.

Skaperdas is a theorist who specializes in political economics research. He has published groundbreaking work on the  role the absence of property rights plays in creating incentives for cooperation, as well as conflict, and its implications for trade, war, organized crime, the role of the state and other topics in more than 40 journal articles and books. More recently, he turned his attention to the faltering financial situation in his home country of Greece. A paper he wrote on the country’s debt crisis was cited in more than a dozen publications – including the The New York Times, The Guardian, National Public Radio and CNN – and propelled him into the policy community as a proponent of dissolving the Eurozone. He has given talks around the world including presentations in Milan, Paris, Quebec, Munich, Oslo and Kigali (Rwanda) as well as others. A full list of workshop and seminar presentations can be found online.

Skaperdas currently serves as associate editor of the journals Global Crime and Economics of Governance and is the co-editor of the recently published Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. He has served as a consultant on civil wars and conflict for the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Center for International Development at Harvard. In addition to his research and service work, Skaperdas also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on basic economics, the global economy, the political economy of economic development, and microeconomic theory.

Preceding Skaperdas as Heinz Chair was Martin McGuire, now economics professor emeritus.