Avner Greif (born 1955) is an economics professor at Stanford University, Stanford, California. He holds a chaired professorship as Bowman Family Professor in the Humanities and Sciences.Greif received his PhD in Economics at Northwestern University, where Joel Mokyr acted as his supervisor, in 1989 and started his career at Stanford University in 1989 until he received tenure in 1994. In 1998 he received a 'genius grant' from the MacArthur Foundation.