All working for tech companies and all profiled in this article in The Economist.
ON THE face of it, economics has had a dreadful decade: it offered no prediction of the subprime or euro crises, and only bitter arguments over how to solve them. But alongside these failures, a small group of the world’s top microeconomists are quietly revolutionising the discipline. Working for big technology firms such as Google, Microsoft and eBay, they are changing the way business decisions are made and markets work.
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November 26, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Angry Dude
Interesting but disappointing article.
1) Preston Mcafee’s 2007 discovery at yahoo has been known to the lowliest of computer operations staff for about half a century. So do you have to be an economist to discover the already known?
2) I believe you’ve commented on this before: nice to see economics subjecting itself to the scientific method, finally.
3) seems the economists have claimed mechanism design and game theory as theirs now.
When a well known OR researcher was asked why a well known economist’s backgroud was math and his work looked just like OR, why isn’t it called that? She replied, well, it is OR but if you call yourself an economist you can make more money.
(Sorry if this sounds negative)
November 26, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Anonymous
Not gonna lie, it sounds a little negative.
November 27, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Anonymous
> 3) seems the economists have claimed mechanism design and game theory as theirs now.
Mechanism design was created by the economist Leonid Hurwicz. Oskar Morgenstern, the co-creator of game theory, was an economist. The first book on game theory is titled “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.”
November 26, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Anonymous2
There’s a huge difference between a mathematician’s and an economist’s approach to Game Theory just as there is a big difference between a computer scientist’s and an economist’s approach to mechanism design. You may dislike the economist’s approach, but if you don’t recognize the difference, you probably don’t get it.
November 27, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Angry Dude
I stand (ready to be) enlightened. Can you point me at an explanation?
November 29, 2012 at 9:37 am
Anonymous
Something’s wrong with the link.
November 29, 2012 at 9:42 am
jeff
weird. the economist changed the url. i updated it. thanks.
March 7, 2013 at 3:09 am
Toyin
I think part of what frustrates Conservatives about the Left is how crrantdictooy and in opposition so many of their beliefs are. The Beliefs of the Welfare Staters and the Greens are basically diametrically opposed.You cannot support a modern welfare state with a declining population impoverished by restrictive policies that hamper the creation of wealth by businesses. Wealth necessry to feed the welfare state gatgantuan.Even worse is the so-called geniuses like Obama that profess both beliefs as dogma at the same time. Leftists simply do not under the logistics of their own beliefs. In fact, Conservatives understand much about their beliefs even better then they do because their beliefs have an emotional and not a logical anchor. They were never reasoned into them in the first place. We live in a world where such wishful thinking is not only tolerated but encouraged. Ultimately, reality will assert itself. This will not end well.
March 8, 2013 at 4:24 am
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