Mary A. O’Sullivan

Mary A. O’Sullivan is a Professor of Economic History in the Department of History, Economics and Society at the University of Geneva. She is on sabbatical leave in 2016-2017 and is spending the year as a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin working on a new project called ‘A Blind Spot in the History of Capitalism: The Shifting Roles of Capital’. O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan is interested in the comparative history of capitalism and economic development with a particular focus on enterprises, industries and financial institutions. She is the author of Dividends of Development: Fits and Starts in the History of U.S. Securities Markets, 1866-1922, (Oxford University Press, 2016); Contests for Corporate Control: Corporate Governance and Economic Performance in the United States and Germany (Oxford University Press, 2000); and co-editor of the book, Corporate Governance and Sustainable Prosperity (Macmillan, 2002). Her articles have been published in a variety of journals in the social sciences and history, with her most recent ones being “A Fine Failure: Relationship Lending, Moses Taylor, and the Joliet Iron & Steel Company, 1869–1888” in the Business History Review (Winter 2014), which was awarded the 2014 Henrietta Larson Award for the best article in that journal, and “Yankee Doodle went to London: Anglo-American Breweries & the London Securities Market, 1888-1892” in the Economic History Review (August 2015). Before joining the University of Geneva, O’Sullivan was an associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2010 and associate professor of strategy at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) from 1996 to 2004. She earned her Ph.D. in business economics at Harvard University, an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin.