Mark Wright is a Senior Economist and Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research examines the workings of capital markets when enforcement of contracts is difficult, whether due to the imperfect operation of the legal system in developing countries, sovereign risk in international markets, or -- most pertinently -- limitations on the ability to pledge human capital in developed countries. Mark is currently on leave from the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, visiting the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has been an economist and advisor to the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco and Minneapolis, and as an instructor at the I.M.F. Institute. He is a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the European Economic Association, Theoretical Economics, and Economics Letters.

Wright received a B.S. in Economics from he University of Sydney, Australia in 1992 and a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from the University of Chicago in 2001.