Home > Academics > Faculty Directory > Faculty Detail
SIPA Faculty
Richard R. Nelson
International Affairs Building, Room 1309B
George Blumenthal Professor of International and Public Affairs, Business and Law
Phone: 212-854-8720
rrn2@columbia.edu
Biography:
Richard R. Nelson is the Henry R. Luce Professor of International Political Economy at Columbia University. In the spring of 1997 he was appointed as the first director of the newly created Public Policy Consortium at Columbia.
His research has concentrated on the processes of long-run economic change, with particular emphasis on technological advances and on the evolution of economic institutions. Some of his publications include The Sources of Economic Growth (Harvard 2000), The Sources of Industrial Leadership (Cambridge 1999), National Innovation Systems: A Comparative Analysis (Oxford 1993), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, (Harvard 1985, reprint), and many others.
Professor Nelson holds a BA from Oberlin College. He obtained his PhD in 1956 from Yale University. From 1956 to 1957 he was an assistant professor at Oberlin College, and from 1968 to 1986 he was a professor at Yale University.
He has also served as an economist at the Rand Corporation (1957–60, 1963–68) and as a senior member at the Council of Economic Advisors (1961–63). Between 1981 and 1986 he was appointed the director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.