Professor Saul Estrin

About
Saul ESTRIN is an emeritus Professor and was the founding Head of the Department of Management at LSE.
He was formerly the Adecco Professor of Business and Society at London Business School. His current research is mainly in international business and entrepreneurship, especially with reference to emerging and transition economies. He has published around 200 books and scholarly papers with a Google cite count of around 34,000. He is ranked among the top 40 management scholars in the UK and is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Academy of International Business (AIB).
He is an Editor of Small Business Economics and has been on numerous Editorial Boards including the Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of Business Venturing. He was President of European Association for Comparative Economic Systems, 2014-16. He was a non-executive Board member of Barings Asset Management, Emerging Markets Trust and a consultant to the World Bank, European Union and OECD and numerous global companies.
His most recent book, "Modern Autocracy: The Rise of Authoritarian Economies – but why only some can succeed" will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2027.
Follow Professor Estrin on Substack.
Expertise
International Business; Entrepreneurship; Comparative Economic Systems
Research
Most of Saul's work relates to the theme of how different institutional and political arrangements motivate individuals and organisations in their economic decision-making, and the implications for economic and business performance.
Thus, examples of institutional arrangements that he is currently exploring include informal institutions like family structure, ethnic diversity and religion. Topics include whether or in what ways individuals choose to become entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs, and the extent to which firms choose to buy or sell, or invest (FDI), across borders. Political factors range from an interest in the economic effects of authoritarianism, the subject of a forthcoming book, to an analysis of how multinational firms are responding to the recent global turmoil and economic fragmentation. This agenda is delivered through a series of inter-related research projects: entrepreneurship and institutions: FDI and de-globalisation; the economics of modern authoritarianism.