Peter Klein is the W. W. Caruth Endowed Chair and professor of entrepreneurship at Baylor University. He is chairman of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation at the Hankamer School of Business and director of the Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise. He also serves as an adjunct professor of strategy and management at the Norwegian School of Economics and Carl Menger Research Fellow at the Mises Institute.
Klein is one of the leading researchers at the intersection of entrepreneurship, strategy, and organization. He applies economic theories and research methods to key issues about the emergence, boundaries, and internal organization of firms, how individuals and groups engage in entrepreneurial and innovative activity, and the ways organizations structure themselves to create and capture value. He is particularly interested in applications of entrepreneurship, strategy, and organization to innovation, diversification, vertical coordination, health care, and public policy.
Klein has authored or co-authored over 70 refereed journal articles, appearing in economics journals such as the Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics, Managerial and Decision Economics, Economic Inquiry, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and management journals such as Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Management, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Perspectives, Strategic Organization, and Journal of Management Studies.
Klein is co-editor of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and associate editor of the Independent Review. He was previously field editor for the Journal of Business Venturing and associate editor for the Academy of Management Perspectives. He was chair of the Academy of Management’s Entrepreneurship Division and also served as chair of the Institutional and Behavioral Economics Section of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
Klein’s 2012 book “Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment” (with Nicolai Foss, Cambridge University Press) won the Foundation for Economic Education Best Book Prize and has been translated into Chinese, Polish, and Persian. His 2010 book “The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur” (Mises Institute) has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese. His newest book, “Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company” (PublicAffairs/Hachette, with Nicolai Foss), appeared in 2022.
He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley (1995), and a BA in economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1988). He has held faculty positions at the University of Missouri, the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Georgia, and Washington University in St. Louis. He was a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in 2000-01. He holds an honorary professorship at the Beijing University of Information Science and Technology.
His research has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, the Illinois-Missouri Biotechnology Alliance, and other organizations.
Peter G. Klein | Hankamer School of Business | Baylor University