Robert Helsley
Robert W. Helsley is the Grosvenor Professor of Cities, Business Economics and Public Policy at the UBC Sauder School of Business, where he served as Dean from 2012 to 2022. He served as an Associate Provost of UBC from 2022 to 2024. Prior to his appointment as Dean, he was Professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and Co-Chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. An urban economist, he studies agglomeration, city formation, land markets, and urban political economy. He has published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Public Economics, and other outlets, including the Journal of Urban Economics, which he co-edited from 2009 to 2012. He has served on the boards of AACSB International and Invest Vancouver, and on the City of Surrey's Investment, Innovation and Business Committee. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton.
Selected Publications
- Robert W. Helsley and William C. Strange (2015), “Coagglomeration, clusters and the scale and composition of cities ”, Journal of Political Economy, Volume 122, Number 5.
- Robert W. Helsley and Yves Zenou, (2014), “Social networks and interactions in cities” Journal of Economic Theory, 150, pp. 426-466.
- Robert W. Helsley and William C. Strange (2011), "Entrepreneurs and cities: Complexity, thickness and balance", Regional Science and Urban Economics, 41, pp. 550-559.
- Jan K. Brueckner and Robert W. Helsley (2011), “Sprawl and blight”, Journal of Urban Economics, 69, pp. 205-213.
- Robert W. Helsley and William C. Strange (2008), "A game-theoretic analysis of skyscrapers", Journal of Urban Economics, 64, pp. 49-64.