Andrei Yakovlev is an economist whose main research interests include state-business relations in Russia, political economy of development, industrial policy, public procurement, and incentives for bureaucracy (with comparative study of Russia and China). From 1993 to 2023 he worked at the HSE (Higher School of Economics) University in Moscow as director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies. In 2011-2022 together with Timothy Frye of Columbia University he led HSE's International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID). In 2015-2019 he served as president of the Association of Russian Economic Think Tanks (ARETT). In 2017 he was awarded the Gaidar Memorial Prize in economics. He is the author of "Agents of Modernization" (HSE, 2006) and the paper "Composition of the ruling elite, incentives for productive usage of rents, and prospects for Russia’s limited access order" (Post-Soviet Affairs, 37(5), 417–434). In 2022-2023 he worked at the Davis Center as a Visiting Scholar.