Simon Johnson

Biography

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, where he is also head of the Global Economics and Management group and chair of the Sloan Fellows MBA Program Committee.

Johnson holds a BA in economics and politics from the University of Oxford, an MA in economics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in economics from MIT. He co-founded and currently leads the popular Global Entrepreneurship Lab (GLAB) course. Over the past 16 years, GLAB MBA students have worked on more than 500 projects with start-up companies around the world.

Johnson is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com and has been a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee since its inception. In July 2014 Johnson joined the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR); he chairs the recently formed Global Vulnerabilities Working Group. His books 13 Bankers: the Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown and White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why it Matters to You won praise across the political spectrum. Johnson’s academic research on economic development, corporate finance and political economy is widely cited.