Benito Arruñada is Professor of Business Organization at the Department of Economics and Business at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. Prior to joining Pompeu Fabra and after graduating from the universities of Oviedo and Rochester, he held positions at the Universities of Oviedo and León, and was John M. Olin Visiting Scholar in Law and Economics at Harvard Law School. He has also taught at the Universities of Paris (I and X), Autónoma de Madrid and Pablo de Olavide in Seville, and visited UC Berkeley, Washington and George Mason Universities. Prof. Arruñada was a member of the founding board of directors and served as President (2005-2006) of the International Society for New Institutional Economics, (ISNIE). 

Prof. Arruñada’s current research analyzes the institutional bases that make firms and markets possible: from the most concrete, such as property titling and business regulation, to some of the most abstract, such as moral systems. Using various methods, from case analysis to mathematical and econometric models, this research aims to discover the organizational conditions that facilitate impersonal exchange, the best means for specializing resources and speeding up economic growth.  His recent work focuses on two main areas: The impact of legal rules and institutions, including property rights and land titling, financial auditing and competition policy.  He is also interested in the organization of specific sectors, including professional services, franchising, public administration, retailing, healthcare and subcontracting.

Prof. Arruñada’s publications include articles in the Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Harvard Business Review, and International Review of Law and Economics, among others.  He is also the author of a dozen books, including The Economics of Audit Quality (Springer: Norwell MA, 1999) and Corporate Governance and Regulation (Alianza: Madrid, 1990), and two textbooks, Contractual Theory of the Firm (Marcial Pons: Madrid, 1998), and The Economics of the Firm: A Contractual Approach (Ariel: Barcelona, 1990).

His personal webpage is here.