Susan Athey

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Susan Athey
Born November 29, 1970 (1970-11-29) (age 37)
Boston, Massachusetts
Residence Flag of the United States U.S.
Nationality Flag of the United States American
Fields Economics
Institutions Harvard University
Alma mater Duke University
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Doctoral advisor Paul Milgrom
Donald John Roberts
Notable awards John Bates Clark Medal (2007)

Susan Carleton Athey (born November 29, 1970) is an American economist. She is currently Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the first female winner of the John Bates Clark Medal.[1]

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[edit] Early life

Susan Athey was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Rockville, Maryland.

She attended Duke University from the age of 16. As an undergraduate at Duke, she completed three majors, in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. She got her start in economics research as a sophomore, working on problems related to auctions with Professor Robert Marshall. She was involved in a number of activities at Duke. She served as treasurer of Chi Omega sorority and as president of the field hockey club.

She graduated with a Ph.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business at the age of 24, her thesis supervised by Professors Paul Milgrom and Donald John Roberts.[1]

[edit] Academic career

Athey's first position was as an Assistant, Associate Professor and Castle Krob Career Development Chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for six years before returning to Stanford's Department of Economics as Professor holding the Holbrook Working Chair for another five years.

[edit] Contributions

While she contributes to several areas of economics, her most notable contributions included a new way to model uncertainty (the subject of her doctoral dissertation) and understand investor behavior given uncertainty, and her insights into the behavior of auctions. Her work changed the way auctions are held. In the early 1990s, Athey uncovered the weaknesses of an overly lenient dispute mechanism. Starting with her experiences selling computers to the US government at auctions, Athey discovered that open auctions which resulted in frequent legal disputes followed by settlements were actually rife with collusion - auction winners shared a portion of their spoils with losers who had cooperated in bidding. Athey's proposal to use sealed bids to reduce the probability of a corrupted auction was widely adopted.[2]

[edit] Professional Service

Susan Athey is the co-editor of the new American Economic Journals: Microeconomics published by the American Economic Association. She has served as an associate editor of several leading journals, including the American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, and the RAND Journal of Economics, as well as the National Science Foundation economics panel, and she currently serves as an associate editor for Econometrica, Theoretical Economics, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. She is a past co-editor of Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. She was the chair of the program committee for the 2006 North American Winter Meetings, and she has served on numerous committees for the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, and the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.

[edit] Awards and Honors

Susan Athey has received the following awards:

  • John Bates Clark Medal in 2007
  • Elaine Bennett Research Award in 2000 (This award is given every other year to a young woman economist who has made outstanding contributions to any field.)
  • State Farm Dissertation Award in 1995
  • Stanford University Leiberman Fellowship
  • Fellow, Econometric Society, 2004-

[edit] Publications

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Priest, Lisa. "Economist who aided Canada wins top honour", Globe&Mail, Toronto, April 23 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-23. 
  2. ^ "Economist Cracks a Glass Ceiling as First Female Winner of Top Prize", Wall Street Journal, April 21-22, 2007. 

[edit] External links

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