Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of International Trade and Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He has been at the University of Toronto since 1987, and was previously at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has published widely on the Chinese economy, both historical and contemporary, in leading economic journals, and has been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. He was co-editor and major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), a landmark study that provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press’ five-volume Encyclopedia of Economic History (2003). His current research focuses on issues of industrial upgrading in China, inequality dynamics, and China's long run economic growth and structural change.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in June 2009.