Naomi Lamoreaux is Professor of Economics and History at Yale University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Her most recent book, edited with Dora L. Costa, is Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Kenneth L. Sokoloff (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2011). 

Professor Lamoreaux received her B.A. in history from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1972 and her Ph.D. in  history from the Johns Hopkins University in 1979.  She taught at Brown University from 1979 to 1996 and at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996 to 2010.  Here current research interests include patenting and the market for technology in late 19th and early 20th century United States, business organizational forms and contractual freedom in the United States and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, the public-private distinction in U.S. history, and the origins of the "rust belt."  Her books include Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England (Cambridge University Press, 1994; paperback, 1996) and The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895-1904 (Cambridge University Press, 1985; paperback, 1988).