Stergios Skaperdas

Stergios Skaperdas is Professor of economics and holds the Clifford S. Heinz Chair (on the economics of peace) at the University of California, Irvine. In July 2016 he was appointed director of the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies. His research examines circumstances in which individuals and groups can make a living not just by producing and trading but also by taking—appropriating—the production of others. With that basic trade-off between production and appropriation at its core, Skaperdas has developed a theoretical framework that allows the study of a variety of economic and political problems, including those of organized crime, the emergence of states and governance, civil wars, and other forms of domestic conflict, as well as the effects of globalization in the presence of insecurity.

His research has been published in a variety of economics and political science journals, including the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, Economic Journal, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Economic Theory, and the Journal of International Economics. He received a BA in economics from Reed College and an MA and PhD, also in economics, from the Johns Hopkins University.