Professor Williamson is the Laird Bell Professor of Economics, Faculty Fellow at the Center for International Development and Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He is also Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Born a New Englander in 1935, Professor Williamson received his PhD from Stanford University in 1961. He then taught at the University of Wisconsin for twenty years before joining the Harvard faculty in 1983. The author of more than twenty scholarly books and almost two hundred articles on economic history, international economics and economic development, Professor Williamson has served as President of the Economic History Association (1994-1995), Chairman of the Economics Department at Harvard (1997-2000), and Master of Mather House at Harvard (1986-1993). His most recent books include The Age of Mass Migration (Oxford 1998, with T. Hatton), Growth, Inequality, and Globalization (Mattioli Lectures: Cambridge 1998, with P. Aghion), Globalization and History (MIT 1999, with K. O'Rourke) and Globalization in Historical Perspective (Chicago and NBER 2003, with M. Bordo and A. M. Taylor), while he has another pending publication entitled World Mass Migration: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance (with T. Hatton). He is also currently doing research on the impact of globalization on the Third World before WWII, including de-industrialization and re-industrialization.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in July 2004.