James Kwak

James Kwak is a prolific writer and blogger whose wide range of scholarly interests includes corporate law and governance, financial markets and regulation, retirement security, and fiscal policy. He is the co-author (with Simon Johnson) of two best-selling books – White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You and Thirteen Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown – the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles and book chapters, an online columnist for The Atlantic, and the co-author of “The Baseline Scenario,” a leading blog on economics and public policy. The holder of a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Kwak spent more than a decade in the business world before a growing interest in the law led him to begin work on his J.D. at Yale Law School in 2008. His business experience includes working as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company, serving as director of marketing at Ariba, and co-founding and serving as vice president of Guidewire Software, a leading provider of core systems for property and casualty insurance companies. During the 2011-2012 academic year, Professor Kwak, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, served as a fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance.