Gérard Roland (economist)

Gérard Roland (born 1954) is a Belgian economist, and a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley since 2001. He graduated from the Free University of Brussels in 1988 where he taught from 1991 to 2001.

His early work was on the political economy of communism. After 1990, he became one of the world's most renowned and influential scholars in transition economics. He published various articles in the top 5 economics journals. He wrote the leading graduate textbook Transition and Economics published in 2000 at MIT Press and translated in various languages, including Chinese and Russian. He co-organized with Olivier Blanchard a Nobel symposium on the transition economics in 1999.

Since he came to UC Berkeley, he broadened his research to development economics, economics of institutions and in particular economics of culture. In recent years, he extended his research to comparative economic history in his quest to understand the origins of different cultures in today's world.

He has received many honors including an honorary professorship from the Renmin University of China in Beijing in 2002 and the medal “De Scientia et humanitate optime meritis” by the Czech Academy of Sciences, November 15 2018. The Association for Comparative Economic Studies created an annual dissertation fellowship in his name to recognize his contributions to the field. He is a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI.

As a convinced supporter of the European Union, he contributed to various reports and studies on the European Union and wrote many articles and a book on the European Parliament, all with Simon Hix (now at EUI) and Abdul Noury (now at NYU Abu Dhabi(.

Selected works

 * "The Design of Reform Packages under Uncertainty", (with M. Dewatripont), American Economic Review, 1995, 83 (5): 107–1223.
 * "Federalism and the soft budget constraint" (with Y. QIan), American Economic Review, 1998, 88(5): 1143-1162.
 * "Separation of powers and political accountability" (with T. Persson and G. Tabellini), Quarterly Journal of Economics,  1997 112(4): 1163-1202.
 * "Understanding the soft budget constraint" (with J. Kornai and E. Maskin Journal of Economic Literature (41) 4: 1095-1136.
 * "The breakup of nations: a political economy analysis" (with P. Bolton) Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1997 112(4): 1057-1090.
 * "Comparative Politics and Public Finance" (with T. Persson and G. Tabellini), Journal of Political Economy 2000 108:1121-1141.
 * "Reform without losers: An interpretation of China's dual-track approach to transition" (with Y. Qian and L. Lau) Journal of Political Economy 2000 108 (1): 120-143.
 * "Understanding institutional change: Fast-moving and slow-moving institutions" Studies in Comparative International Development 2003 38, 109-131.
 * "Coordination and Experimentation in M-form and U-form organisations" (with Y. Qian and C. Xu) Journal of Political Economy 2007 114(2): 366-402.
 * "Culture, Institutions and the Wealth of Nations" (with Y. Gorodnichenko) Review of Economics and Statistics 2017 99(3):402:416.


 * BOOKS:
 * Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets and Firms. MIT Press 2000.
 * Democratic Politics in the European parliament (with S. Hix and A. Noury), Cambridge University Press 2007.
 * Development Economics, Pearson 2013.