Leonard Waverman is dean of the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and a former fellow of the London Business School (LBS).
For eight years prior to returning to Canada, he was a professor of economics at LBS and from 2003 to 2007 chair of the economics subject area at LBS. He was also dean of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.
Professor Waverman’s current research is on the growth and productivity impacts of the rollout of telecommunications and computers. His analysis of the impacts of mobile phone rollout on growth in Africa was the subject of an “Economic Focus” section of the Economist (March 12, 2005). He has authored the influential Connectivity Scorecard, an annual index that ranks countries according to how advanced their communications networks are in promoting productivity and economic growth.
In January 2009, he was cited as one of the world’s top-50 most influential thought leaders in the telecommunications industry by Global Telecoms Business magazine. His most influential publication is “Telecommunications Infrastructure and Economic Development” (with Lars Hendrik Roeller, American Economic Review, September 2001).
He is currently on the editorial board of Telecommunications Policy, an Elsevier scholarly journal; a director of the CD Howe Institute; and on the Chairman’s Advisory Committee of the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board.
For five years until May 2007, Professor Waverman was a non-executive board member of the UK’s energy regulator, the Gas and Electricity Market Authority. He is a fellow of Columbia University’s Centre for Tele-Information and of the University of California, Berkeley’s Fisher IT Center. He is on Vodafone’s Advisory Board on the Social Importance of Mobile and is a director of the Nexus Mundi Foundation in Rome.
Professor Waverman was on the Advisory Committee introducing Competition in Ontario’s Electricity system (1995-1996), a part-time board member of the Ontario Energy Board and the Ontario Telephone Service Commission, and a member of the US National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) for six years. He also edited the Energy Journal, the major journal in energy economics, for six years.
Professor Waverman has a BComm and an MA (studying with Marshall McLuhan) from the University of Toronto and a PhD in economics from MIT. He is a citizen of Canada and France, and he has received the honor of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques from the Government of France.
