William Thompson is head of the Eurasia Division of the OECD Secretariat of International Relations, having previously worked for seven years as a senior economist in the organization's economic department and six years in the Directorate of Public Administration and Territorial Development. He is the author of Khrushchev: A Political Life (Macmillan/St Martin's, 1995) and The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev (Longman, 2003), as well as The Political Economy of Reform: Lessons from Pensions, Product and Labor Markets in Ten Countries, and numerous articles, book chapters and working papers on political economy and economic policy. He was the lead author of four OECD economic surveys. Since 2010, he has led a number of OECD studies on regional and urban development. He was the editor of the OECD book Reform Is Happening (2010) and, with Dr Julie Newton, Institutions, Ideas and Leadership in Russian Politics (Macmillan, 2010). Before joining the OECD, Professor Thompson taught at the Universities of London and Oxford. He has also worked as a private consultant and advisor to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the UK House of Commons. In addition to his work at the OECD, he taught at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Emory University in the USA and a doctorate from Oxford University.
