Dr. Michael Sykuta is an economist and Associate Professor in the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri. He was appointed Executive Director of FRI effective January 1, 2021.

Dr. Sykuta's research focuses on contracting practices, firm organization, organizational governance, and the implications of regulation and government programs for firm and industry behavior.  He has published articles in such peer-reviewed journals as Journal of Law and Economics, Financial Review, Journal of Corporate Finance, Antitrust Bulletin, Managerial and Decision Economics; and book chapters on econometrics of contracting and organizational economics research. He co-edited and published The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics with Peter G. Klein.

He is an affiliate scholar with the International Center for Law & Economics and is co-editor of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN)’s New Institutional Economics eJournal. He is Co-founder and Director of the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute (CORI), an interdisciplinary research program at the University of Missouri focused on the economics and law of contracting, organization, and corporate governance.

He earned a PhD in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a BS in economics from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Prior to joining the faculty at Missouri in 1998, he was on faculty at the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business.