Luigi Zingales

Luigi Zingales is the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research interests span from corporate governance and financial development to political economy and the economic effects of culture. He has published extensively in the major economics and financial journals. He also wrote two best-selling books: Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (2003) with Raghu Rajan, and A Capitalism for the People (2012). In 2014 he served as President of the American Finance Association. In July 2015 he became the Director of the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago. Since January 2018, he has co-hosted the podcast Capitalisn’t, which explores how capitalism can go wrong and what we can do to fix it. Born in Italy, Zingales carries with him a civic passion and the belief that economists should not just interpret the world, they should change it for the better. Commenting on his method of teaching on a few very important lessons rather than a myriad of details, Zingales says, "Twenty years from now they might have forgotten all the details of my course, but hopefully they will not have forgotten the way of thinking." Zingales received a bachelor's degree in economics summa cum laude from Università Bocconi in Italy in 1987 and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992.