John McMillan was the Jonathan B. Lovelace professor of economics in Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business and one of the worlds leading economic theorists and applied microeconomists. His career was initially marked by important contributions to auction theory and mechanism design. In the 1980s, he worked on the use of incentives in state owned enterprises in China and policies for emerging economies. His recent work has examined entrepreneurship in those economies as well as the institutional structure for economic development.