Ph.D., Michigan State University; Resource Development
University-wide Professor. Adjunct Professor – JMC
From 1976to 1997 Professor Mercuro was on the faculty of the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of New Orleans; from 1988-1996 he was also a member of the adjunct faculty of Tulane Law School. In 1996-1997, Professor Mercuro was awarded the John A. Hannah Visiting Endowed Chair for Integrative Studies and also named the Jeffrey N. and Kathryn C. Cole Professor - Honors College, Michigan State University. He accepted a university-wide professorship at Michigan State University in 1997.
Professor Mercuro has authored journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews in the field of law and economics. He also authored or edited 8 books. Among his publications, he has co-authored Law, Economics and Public Policy (JAI Press, 1984); edited a collection of essays for a book titled Law and Economics (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989); edited Taking Property and Just Compensation: Law and Economics Perspectives of the Takings Issue (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992); He co-authored a book titled Ecology, Law and Economics (University Press of America, 1994) and Economics and the Law: From Posner to Post-Modernism (Princeton University Press, 1997). In 1999, he and Professor Warren J. Samuels of Michigan State University edited a collection of twenty-two original articles titled The Fundamental Interrelationships between Government and Property (JAI Press). In 2005 he edited a book with Professor Margaret Oppenheimer titled Law & Economics: Alternative Economic Approaches to Legal and Regulatory Issues. He and Professor Warren J. Samuels were guest volume editors for a thematic issue of the Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines with the title The Meaning and Role of the Market (came into print in March 2006). Recently, together with Professor Steven G. Medema, they completed the 2nd edition of Economics and the Law: From Posner to Postmodernism and Beyond for Princeton University Press (it came into print in September 2006). In 2007, with the assistance of Lauren Yuile (a student in James Madison College), he completed work on a 2,000 page / 5 volume encyclopedia titled Law and Economics (Critical Concepts in Law / Routledge Major Work). In March of 2007, he organized a 2-day workshop at Michigan State University to honor the career of MSU Professor A. Allan Schmid. The workshop titled, *Assessing the Evolution and Impact of Alternative Institutional Structures,* explored the various strands of institutionalism Based on that workshop, he, together with Professor Sandra S. Batie edited 17 contributed workshop papers for a book titled Alternative Institutional Structures, published by Routledge Press, 2008.
In 1989 he founded, and served as the series editor of an interdisciplinary annual book series - The International Review of Comparative Public Policy. In 1994 he founded, and now serves as the series co-editor of the book series, The Economics of Legal Relationships. He has engaged in extensive research and teaching in Europe -- in the summer of 1995 he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Economic Theory at the University of Vienna where he lectured on Ecology, Law and Economics; he was an invited Research Associate the summer of 1996 at the Erasmus Program in Law and Economics, University of Hamburg; he served as a Guest Professor at Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Economie, Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan,France where he lectured on Law and Economics. In the spring of 2003 he was on sabbatical at Université de Droit, d*Economie et des Sciences d*Aix-Marseille, Faculté d*Economie Appliquée, Aix en Provence, France. While on sabbatical he presented lectures at i) the Faculty of Applied Economics, Université de Droit, d*Economie et des Sciences d*Aix-Marseille, Aix en Provence; ii) the Institute of Economic Theory, University of Vienna; iii) the Department of Economics, School of Agronomy, Paris; and iv) the John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin.
In October 2006, Nicholas Mercuro was re-appointed by Governor Granholm to the Michigan Environmental Science Board for a period of 3 years.
Nicolas Mercuro organized two art exhibitions for the MSU College of Law entitled Building Islam in Detroit: Foundations, Forms, Futures and Displaced Sudan: The Cost of Silence.
In December of 2006, Professor Mercuro completed work on a 5-volume, 2,000 page encyclopedia titled – Law and Economics (Critical Concepts in Law / Routledge Major Work), for London: Routledge Press (forthcoming September 2007). The permissions to reprint were obtained by the Project Assistant, Ms. Lauren Yuille, a former student of James Madison College.
Professor Mercuro is organizing a workshop entitled “Various Approaches to Assessing the Evolution and Impact of Alternative Institutional Structures: A Workshop in Honor of the Career of Professor A. Allan Schmid,” March 15 & 16, 2007 at Henry Center for Executive Development, Michigan State University. This workshop will explore the variety of strands of what now comes under the moniker Institutional Law and Economics, Neo-Institutional Economics, or just Institutionalism. It will address such questions as: How different are the presented approaches? ... Do these fundamentally different approaches have their own value-added? ... or ... Are we saying the same thing using different language and perspective? Could parts of different approaches be integrated for even more insight? ... or ... Do different problems require different approaches? Seventeen scholars from the U.S. and Europe have agreed to present papers at the workshop and contribute chapters to a culminating book titled – Assessing the Evolution and Impact of Alternative Institutional Structures, edited by Sandra Batie and Nicholas Mercuro, to be published in The Economics of Legal Relationships (book series), London: Routledge Press, (forthcoming 2008).
Nicholas Mercuro and Steven G. Medema published Economics and the Law, Second Edition: From Posner to Postmodernism and Beyond in August 2006. This book is an expanded second edition of Nicholas Mercuro and Steven Medema's influential book Economics and the Law, whose publication in 1998 marked the most comprehensive overview of the various schools of thought in the burgeoning field of Law and Economics. Mercuro is also Professor of Law in Residence at Michigan State University College of Law. For more information on the book, see the website: http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8276.html.
Nicolas Mercuro co-edited a forthcoming article en-titled “The Meaning and Role of the Market” in Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines (Bilingual Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies),Volume 14, No. 4.
