Michael E. Sykuta
Associate Professor, Division of Applied Sciences
University of Missouri
Michael E. Sykuta is associate professor of agricultural and applied economics in the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri, executive director of the Financial Research Institute, and an academic affiliate of the International Center for Law & Economics.
His research focuses on organizational economics, contracting, corporate governance, industrial organization, antitrust, regulation, and political economy. He studies how regulation and government programs affect firm behavior, with particular attention to public-utility regulation, energy policy, ownership structure, and agri-food value chains.
Sykuta also serves as director of the Center for Rural Energy Security at the University of Missouri and co-editor of the Social Science Research Network’s New Institutional Economics eJournal. He co-founded and directs the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute, an interdisciplinary program examining the economics and law of contracting and corporate governance.
Before joining the University of Missouri faculty, he was a faculty research associate and lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business and associate director of the Center for Research on Contracts and the Structure of Enterprise. Earlier, he held teaching and research appointments at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and was a research fellow at the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University.
He co-edited the book “The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics.”
His honors include multiple teaching awards from the University of Missouri, including the Golden Apple Award and the Writing Intensive Teaching Excellence Award.
He earned a Ph.D. in economics and a master’s in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelor’s from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
