Mr Shavell graduated from the University of Michigan in 1968, was an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service at the Centers for Disease Control from 1968 to 1970, and obtained a Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1973. He was on the faculty of the Department of Economics at Harvard University from 1974 to 1980 and moved to the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1980. His focal interests are in the economic analysis of the basic subject areas of law—contracts, torts, property, and criminal law—and in the legal process. Shavell is the founder and director of the School’s John M. Olin Center for Law Economics, and Business, a past director of the Law and Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a co-founder and past president of the American Law and Economics Association. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, is an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the Ronald H. Coase Medal for research in law and economics. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including the treatise, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law, Harvard University Press, 2004.
