In 2020, Paul was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. According to the Distinguished Fellow citation, he “is the world’s leading auction designer, having helped design many of the auctions for radio spectrum conducted around the world in the last thirty years, including those conducted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (ranging from the original simultaneous multiple round auction with activity rules, to the recent incentive auction for repurposing broadcast spectrum for modern uses). His applied work in auction design and consulting has established new ways for economists to interact with the wider world. He is also a theorist of extraordinary breadth, who has provided (and still continues to provide) foundational insights not only into the theory of auctions (including his 1982 paper with Weber), but across the range of modern microeconomic theory.”
Continuing, the citation notes that “His work has been widely recognized. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received major prizes, including the 2008 Nemmers Prize, the 2012 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, the 2014 Golden Goose Award (with McAfee and Wilson), the 2018 CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications, and the 2018 John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science (with Kreps and Wilson). He is the dissertation advisor of many successful economists.”
His work examines the use of broad-based stock option plans and how firms use non-cash benefits and respond to limits on their ability to displace workers. He also explores how labor market conditions affect their entire careers when MBAs and PhD economists leave school.
Paul’s current projects include studies of the gig economy and a study of how people’s backgrounds determine their decision to become an entrepreneur, as well as the success of ventures that they pursue.
Alex `Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, co-leads the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives, and is a founding member of the Advisory Boards for Nissan, Motorola Mobility, Telefonica, and a variety of start-up firms. He has previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future Health.
In 2012 Forbes named Sandy one of the `seven most powerful data scientists in the world’, along with Google founders and the CTO of the United States, and in 2013 he won the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review. He is among the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and a pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features on BBC World, Discover and Science channels. His most recent book is `Honest Signals,’ published by MIT Press.
Over the years Sandy has advised more than 50 PhD students. Almost half are now tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own companies.
Sandy’s research group and entrepreneurship program have spun off more than 30 companies to date, three of which are publicly listed and several that serve millions of poor in Africa and South Asia. Recent spin-offs have been featured in publications such as the Economist and the New York Times, as well as winning a variety of prizes from international development organizations.
He is the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review), both at Stanford University. He is the author most recently of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values (edited with Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, University of Chicago Press, 2016). He is also the author of several books on education: Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and Education, Justice, and Democracy (edited with Danielle Allen, University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Rob’s current work focuses on ethics, public policy, and technology, and he serves as associate director of the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence initiative at Stanford. He is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Walter J. Gores award, Stanford’s highest honor for teaching. Reich was a sixth grade teacher at Rusk Elementary School in Houston, Texas before attending graduate school. He is a board member of the magazine Boston Review, of Giving Tuesday, and at the Spencer Foundation.
Rob is a sought-after public speaker and writes frequently for a general audience in publications such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, and Chronicle of Philanthropy. See more of his public appearances on the Just Giving page.
He teaches economics and public policy courses on competition policy and strategy, economic policy analysis, and writing and rhetoric.
Gregory served as deputy chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission working on the implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and helped to design and implement the first ever spectrum auctions in the United States. In 2011, he served as Senior Economist for Transactions for the Federal Communications Commission for the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile transaction. He co-chaired the Economy, Globalization and Trade committee for the 2008 Obama campaign and was a member of the Obama transition team on economic agency review and energy policy. He also served as a member and co-chair of the Department of Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee from 2010 – 2014.
Gregory has written extensively on the application of economics to telecommunications issues. He has advised companies and governments regarding auctions in the United States and other countries and served as a consultant to various organizations including the World Bank and the Federal Communications Commission, and as a board member and advisor to high technology, financial, and startup companies in the areas of auctions, business strategy, antitrust and regulation. He serves as chairman of the board of the Stanford Federal Credit Union, as a board member of the Nepal Youth Foundation, and as an advisory board member of Sustainable Conservation and the Technology Policy Institute.
Gregory received his PhD in economics from Stanford University and his A.B. with honors in economics from University of California at Berkeley.
In recent work, Shaw evaluates the importance of bosses in improving the productivity of their subordinates. She (and her co-authors) show that a good boss can markedly improve his subordinate’s productivity now and into the future as the worker moves on. Shaw has also developed an interest in entrepreneurship, showing that serial entrepreneurs develop intangible capital that they take with them as they move from their first firm to a new more productive firm. In earlier work that has been published in the American Economic Review and Management Science, she and her colleagues evaluate the effectiveness of complementary teamwork practices in the steel industry. She has also focused on the performance gains from new information technologies and the changes in management strategy towards product customization that enhance returns to investment. In related work on incentives in franchising, she shows how the optimal use of franchise contracts can increase brand value for franchise companies. Her research has been extensively funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Department of Labor.
In 2001, Shaw received the Columbia University award for the best paper on international business, and in 1998, she was honored as the recipient of the Minnesota Award for Employment Research for the best paper in 1997-98 on the topic of employment issues. She held a Stanford Graduate School of Business Trust Faculty Fellow in 2005-2006. She has been the recipient of the Xerox Research Chair, has served on a Research Panel of the NSF, and was an Editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. At Carnegie Mellon University, Shaw received the Award for Sustained Teaching Excellence, the Economics Department Teaching Award, was Chair of the Faculty Senate and was Head of the Department of Industrial Management.
Shoshana Vasserman’s work leverages theory, empirics, and modern computation to better understand the equilibrium implications of policies and proposals that involve information revelation, risk sharing, and commitment. Recent projects span a number of policy settings, including public procurement, pharmaceutical pricing, and auto-insurance.
He holds a PhD in management science and engineering and a MA in economics, both from Stanford University. His research is in the areas of data science, operations, management science, industrial organization, and market design. Gabriel is particularly interested in developing mathematical, computational, and econometric models to study the economics and the optimization of online platforms. After his PhD, he spent 10 years as faculty at Columbia Business School.
Gabriel is a recipient of the IFORS Prize for Operations Research in Development 2002, given every three years to the best application of operations research/management science in a developing country. He also received the MSOM Young Scholar Prize 2015 that recognizes exceptional young researchers who have made outstanding contributions to scholarship in operations management. Gabriel has advised and worked with several online platforms.
Robb Willer’s teaching and research focus on social forces that bring people together (e.g., morality, altruism), forces that divide them (e.g., fear, prejudice), and domains of social life that feature the complex interplay of the two (e.g., hierarchies, politics).
The primary area of his research looks at the social and psychological forces shaping Americans’ political attitudes. He has a particular interest in techniques for overcoming polarization to build political consensus. He studies how political psychology findings can be applied to construct persuasive political messages.
Much of his political research suggests that attitudes and ideology are, in part, products of individuals’ efforts to manage the threats they face in everyday life. For example, he has found that masculinity threats can influence men’s attitudes towards war and gay rights. In other research, he finds a link between white Americans’ views of welfare programs and the Tea Party and their perception that white advantage in the U.S. is declining.
The other main area of his research looks at how altruism, morality, and reputation systems promote cooperation and generosity. In this research, he finds that many aspects of social life that are often seen as antisocial or malicious – such as gossip, moral judgments, and status hierarchies – are fundamental to social order. He also studies the dynamics of status and prestige, with a focus on the social psychological forces that stabilize hierarchies of rank. Recently, he has studied the role that emotions play in the moral judgments people form about one another, and how those judgments can promote cooperation and solidarity in groups.
In his work, he employs whatever research method offers the most leverage on a given research question. As a result, he has used a variety of methods, including laboratory and field experiments, surveys, archival research, social network analysis, physiological measurement, agent-based modeling, and direct observation of behavior.
His research has appeared primarily in general science, sociology, psychology, and organizations journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences.
His research has also received widespread media coverage, including from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, Science, Nature, Time, U.S. News and World Report, Scientific American, Harper’s, Slate, CNN, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and National Public Radio.
Willer was the 2009 recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching award, the only teaching award given by UC-Berkeley’s student body.
Diyi Yang is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford HCI Group, Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). She is interested in socially aware natural language processing. Her research goal is to better understand human communication in social context and build socially aware language technologies to support human-human and human-computer interaction.
