Robert Klitgaard


Robert Klitgaard was the president of Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California from July 2005 until his resignation on February 20, 2009. Prior to this time, he served as the dean of the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California, where he was also the Ford Distinguished Professor of International Development and Security.

Early life

Klitgaard received A.B., M.P.P., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.

Career

He previously served as Professor of Economics at the University of Natal ; Lester Crown Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management; and Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he also served half-time as Special Assistant to Harvard's President Derek Bok.
Klitgaard has been an advisor to many governments on economic strategy and institutional reform, and his consulting work and research have taken him to more than thirty countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. He has been called “the world’s leading expert on corruption”. In the past five years he has served on the faculty of the World Economic Forum, the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature and Theoria, and the Board of the International Development Evaluation Association. He has been a consultant to the Asia Foundation, the Asian Development Bank, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Interamerican Development Bank, the IMF, the OECD, the Organization of American States, the White House, the United Nations, USAID, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, as well as to many governments around the world.
His book, Tropical Gangsters is a biographical tale detailing his time spent as an economic advisor in Equatorial Guinea, as well as some surfing on the island of Bioko. It was a bestseller in the US, and is still read by many college students studying African life and politics.

Personal life

Klitgaard is married and has four children.