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Andrei Shleifer is a prominent academic economist.
He was born in Russia and emigrated to the USA as
a teenager. He then studied economics, obtaining
his Ph.D. at MIT. He has held a post in the
Department of Economics at Harvard University
since 1991 and is January 2005|currently the
Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Economics. In
1999, Shleifer was awarded the John Bates Clark
Medal for his seminal works on behavioral finance.

==Work==
Andrei Shleifer is among the most highly cited
scientists in the fields of Business and
Economics, garnering more than a thousand
citations in the period of 1993 to 2003. 
(Scholarly_method#Citation|Citation rate is one
measure of a scientist's impact on thought and
practice in a particular field of endeavor.) His
work focuses mostly on financial economics, where
he has been one of the pioneers of the field of
behavioral finance.

In recent years, his research has focused on the
Legal Origins Theory (also sometimes known as Law
and finance theory), which claims that the legal
tradition a country adheres to (such as common law
or various types of civil law (legal system)|civil
law) is an important determining factor for a
country's development, most of all financial
development.

==Activities in Russia and their fallout==
During the early 1990s, Andrei Shleifer was an
advisor to Anatoly Chubais, the then vice-premier
of Russia, and was one of the engineers of the
Russian privatization. During that time, Harvard
University was under a contract with the United
States Agency for International Development, which
paid Harvard and its employees to advise the
Russian government. Much later, the US government
alleged that Shleifer, his wife, his assistant
Jonathan Hay, and Hay's girlfriend, had been
buying Russian stocks while they were working on
the privatization, which contravened Harvard's
contract with the USAID. In June 2004, a federal
judge found Harvard, Shleifer and Hay liable for
treble damages under the False Claims Act, which
could amount to damages of up to $120 million for
each of them. Shleifer and Hay were found to have
defrauded the US government. There were no
indications that Shleifer's tenure might have be
revoked, since he is one of the stars of the
economics department and a close friend of
Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers (with whom
he has also co-authored some articles).

In June 2005, Harvard and Shleifer announced that
they had reached a tentative settlement with the
US government.

On August 3 of the same year, Harvard University,
Shleifer and the Justice department reached an
agreement under which the univeristy will pay 26.5
million dollars to settle the five-year-old
lawsuit. Shleifer is also responsible for paying 2
million dollars worth of damage, though he does
not admit any liability. 
== References ==
http://www.in-cites.com/nobel/2003-eco-top100.html
Most-Cited Scientists in Economics & Business in
Essential Science Indicators (2003). 
Thompson-ISI.  Retrieved 2005-01-30.

== External links ==
*
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/shleifer
/shleifer.html Staff Member page @ Harvard
University
*
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/04.07.04.
html Report on the Shleifer trial (June 2004)
*
http://www.uh.edu/ednews/2004/wsj/200410/20041013h
arvard.html Wall Street Journal article on
possible solutions for Harvard(October 2004)
*
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=508343
Harvard Crimson article on the settlement
== See also ==
* List of economists