Scholars

Mary O’Sullivan is a professor of economic history and the chair of the Department of History, Economics and Society at the University of Geneva. She is interested in the comparative history of capitalism and economic development, with a particular focus on the history of enterprises, industries, and financial institutions. She is the author of Contests for Corporate Control: Corporate Governance and Economic Performance in the United States and Germany (Oxford University Press, 2000) as well as many journal articles, and coeditor of Corporate Governance and Sustainable Prosperity (Macmillan, 2002). She has just completed a third book, Dividends of Development: Fits and Starts in the History of U.S. Securities Markets, 1865–1919 (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2016), which analyzes thedevelopment of US capital markets from the Civil War through World War 1. Her latest articles are “A Fine Failure: Relationship Lending, Moses Taylor, and the Joliet Iron & Steel Company, 1869–1888,” Business History Review (Winter 2014), which was awarded the 2014 Henrietta Larson Award for the best article in that journal; and “Yankee Doodle Went to London: Anglo-American Breweries and the London Securities Market, 1888–92,” Economic History Review (August 2015).

Before joining the University of Geneva, O’Sullivan was an associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2010 and associate professor of strategy at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) from 1996 to 2004. She earned her Ph.D. in business economics at Harvard University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin.