Field of research: Economic Theory

Konstantin Sonin is John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His research interests include political economics, economic theory, and conflict.

Sonin earned MSc and PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University and MA in economics from Moscow’s New Economic School (NES), was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Davis Center, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a visiting professor at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. Before joining the University of Chicago, he served on the faculty and as a vice-president of NES and HSE University in Moscow. Over two decades, he has guest-lectured in dozens of universities, summer schools, and high schools across Russia and worked part-time as a teacher of economics in a high school.

His research has been published in leading academic outlets in economics and political science. In addition to academic work, Sonin writes columns, Op-Eds, and blogs on Russia-related political and economic issues. In 2023, he was put on the federal wanted list in Russia for posting information about the atrocities that the Russian occupying forces committed in the town of Bucha in Ukraine.

Konstantin first visited the Stockholm Institute for Transition Economies in 1999, and has been a research affiliate and a friend ever since.