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Summary Biography

Michael Heller's new book The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (Basic Books, 2008) was published July 15. In The Gridlock Economy, Heller draws on everyday experiences - from airport delays to new-style rap music - to show why the structure of ownership matters so much more than people may realize.  Private ownership usually creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect - it creates gridlock.  This is a free market paradox that Heller discovered and it's the dynamic at the center of our gridlock economy. For information and reviews, please visit http://www.gridlockeconomy.com/.

Heller teaches courses in property, land use, real estate, and international law and development. His scholarship explores ownership puzzles in a wide range of settings. For example, in "Land Assembly Districts," Harvard Law Review (April 2008) (with Rick Hills), Heller proposes a simple, workable solution to the problem of eminent domain abuse.  His Corporate Governance Lessons from Transition Economy Reforms (Princeton University Press, 2006), co-edited with Columbia Law School professor Merritt Fox, is a collection of essays that uses post-socialist economic experience to illuminate the fundamentals of corporate governance.

Heller's work on "The Tragedy of the Anticommons," published in the Harvard Law Review and in Science, draws on post-socialist transition and biomedical research to show how the creation of too many private property rights can be as costly as creating too few. In "The Liberal Commons," co-authored with Hanoch Dagan and published in the Yale Law Journal, Heller explores declining black landownership in America and offers a new theory of commons property. 

In addition, Heller has published articles on takings law, corporate governance, natural resources, restitution, and post-socialist transition in numerous journals and edited volumes. (Note: Heller's scholarly articles are available in PDF format by clicking on the Publications tab on the right of your screen and scrolling to bottom of page.)

Heller joined the Columbia faculty in 2002. During 2004-05, he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. From 1994 to 2002, Heller taught at the University of Michigan Law School where he received the L. Hart Wright Award for excellence in teaching. He has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has co-directed corporate governance research at the University of Michigan Business School's William Davidson Institute.

Heller was a visiting professor at UCLA in 2006-07, NYU in 2001, an Olin Senior Fellow at Columbia in 2000 and a visiting lecturer at Yale in 1991. During 1990-94, Heller worked at the World Bank on post-socialist property law transition.

Heller clerked for the Honorable James R. Browning, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Harvard College.