Thomas Lyon
Thomas P. Lyon holds the Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at the University of Michigan, and is the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.
Professor Lyon earned his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University and his doctorate at Stanford University. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and at the University of Bonn, a Fulbright Scholar at the Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, and a Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington, DC.
Professor Lyon serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and the Journal of Regulatory Economics, and his research has been published in such journals as the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, and the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization.
Professor Lyon’s primary research interest is the causes and consequences of government regulation, including the effects of regulation on business and the ways in which corporate strategies shape regulation. He has published extensively on corporate environmentalism, electric utility investment practices, natural gas contracting, the effects of regulation on innovation, and the introduction of competition in regulated industries. He has served as a consultant on these issues to a variety of clients in the private and public sectors.
Professor Lyon’s current research focuses on corporate environmental information disclosure, greenwash, the causes and consequences of renewable energy policy, and voluntary programs for environmental improvement. His book Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy, published by Cambridge University Press in October 2004, is the first rigorous economic analysis of this increasingly important topic.
Professor Lyon’s teaching experience includes managerial economics, business and government, environmental governance, game theory, business strategy, and the management of innovation.
Thomas Lyon is a MMPEI Faculty Fellow.