Ron Harris is the Kalman Lubowsky Professor of Law and History, and former Dean, at the Faculty of Law in Tel-Aviv University.
His main field of research is the history of the business corporation. He studies its history in Britain and comparatively, and in the wider context of legal and economic history, the history of industrialization, capitalism, colonialism and globalization. He also works on the history of other forms of business organization (partnerships, commenda, private companies, etc.) and of other legal-economic institutions (contracts, property rights, etc.). His additional research interests include the methodology of legal-economic history, the history and policy of bankruptcy and consumer credit, and Israeli legal history.
He earned an LL.B., and B.A. and M.A. in history from TAU and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. Harris was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2017-18) and in the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2023-4). He was a visiting professor at the Law Schools of UC Berkeley, USC, Cornell University, École Normale Supérieure in Paris, London School of Economics (Economic History, Law), HEC Business School in Paris, NALSAR Hyderabad, the Center for Economic History at Northwestern University, and spent extended research periods as a visiting fellow in Oxford. Harris is a co-founder of the Israeli Legal History Association, Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, and the President of the Economic History Association of Israel.
Harris is the author of three books: Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700 (Princeton, 2020); Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720 – 1844 (Cambridge, 2000); Israeli Law: The Formative Years 1948-1977 (2014). He is the editor of two other books and the author or co-author of numerous articles in economics, business, history and law journals. He is completing a book titled Empire Ltd.: Law and the Rise of Multinational Companies in the First Era of Globalization (1844-1914). He is currently working on a joint project on the comparative history of private companies in France, Germany, Britain, and the US (with Naomi Lamoreaux, Timothy Guinnane and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal), and on a book tentatively titled The Business Corporation: The First Four Hundred Years (under contract with Cambridge University Press).
