Richard Holden is Professor of Economics at UNSW Business School, Director of the Economics of Education Knowledge Hub @UNSWBusiness, co-director of the New Economic Policy Initiative, and President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Prior to that he was on the faculty at the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

He received an AM and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. His research focuses on contract theory, organizational economics, law and economics, and political economy. He has written on topics including: network capital, political districting, the boundary of the firm, incentives in organizations, mechanism design, voting rules, and blockchain. 

Professor Holden has published in top general interest journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, and Nature. He is currently editor of the Journal of Law and Economics. 

He has been a Visiting Professor of Economics at  the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT Sloan School of Management,  Visiting Professor of Economics at the Harvard Economics Department, and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and Columbia Law School.

He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW, a Distinguished Fellow of the Luohan Academy, and a Senior Academic Fellow at the e61 Institute.

His research has been featured in press articles in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Economist, and The New Republic. Professor Holden appears regularly as a media commentator, and has published opinion pieces in outlets including the Australian Financial Review, the Australian, the New York Times, The New Republic, Times Higher Education, and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review.