William Tompson

William Tompson is Head of the Eurasia Division in the OECD Global Relations Secretariat, having previously spent seven years as a Senior Economist in the Organisation’s Economics Department and six years in its Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorates. He is the author of Khrushchev: A Political Life (Macmillan/St Martin's, 1995) and The Soviet Union under Brezhnev (Longman, 2003), as well as The Political Economy of Reform: Lessons from Pensions, Product Markets and Labour Markets in Ten OECD Countries (OECD, 2009) and numerous articles, book chapters and working papers on political economy and economic policy. He was the lead author for four OECD Economic Surveys. Since 2010, he has led a number of OECD studies of regional and urban development. He was the editor of the OECD’s Making Reform Happen (2010) and, together with Dr Julie Newton, of Institutions, Ideas and Leadership in Russian Politics (Macmillan, 2010). Prior to joining the OECD, Professor Tompson taught at the University of London and the University of Oxford. He has also worked as a private consultant and as an advisor to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the British House of Commons. In addition to working at the OECD, he has taught at the Institut d´Études Politiques de Paris. He holds BA and MA degrees from Emory University in the United States and a doctorate from the University of Oxford.