Paul David Klemperer, FBA, is an economist and the Edgeworth Professor of Economics at Oxford University. He is a member of the prominent Klemperer family
Klemperer has an engineering degree from Cambridge University, and an MBA and an economics PhD from Stanford University. He was elected John Thomson Fellow and Tutor of St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1984, and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford in 1995, when he became Edgeworth Professor in succession to Nobel prizewinner James Mirrlees.
He works on industrial economics, competition policy, auction theory, and climate change economics and policy.
He was a Member of the UK Competition Commission from 2001–5. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1994, a Fellow of the British Academy in 1999, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
Contents |
His 1985 papers (with Jeremy Bulow and John Geanakoplos) developed the concept — and invented the terminology — of "strategic complements" that is now commonly used in game theory, industrial organization and elsewhere.
His PhD thesis, and independent work by Carl Christian von Weizsacker, began the study of consumer switching costs.
His paper on supply function equilibria (with Margaret Meyer) developed a standard model for the analysis of privatized electricity markets, and has been important in developing the theory of multiunit auctions.
Many of his papers apply ideas from auction theory to other economic contexts, including finance and political economy.
He has also invented new auction designs, including the “Product Mix Auction” that is now in regular use by the Bank of England. This new auction for differentiated products has similarities to a simultaneous multiple-round auction, but runs instantaneously, is more robust against collusion, and allows sellers, as well as buyers, to specify how the quantities they trade will depend on the auction prices. His other innovations include the Anglo-Dutch auction, and Reference-Rule Pricing for package auctions.
He was principal auction-theorist designing the UK '3G' mobile-phone license auction that raised £22½ billion and was far more successful than several parallel exercises on the European continent; it has been argued that the UK Treasury therefore owes £15 billion or more to him and Ken Binmore who led the auction team.
In 2002, he advised the UK government on the world's first auction for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, working with Nobel prizewinner Eric Maskin.
In 2007-2008, he advised the UK and US governments on the financial crisis, and he developed a new form of auction to help the Bank of England alleviate the liquidity crisis; he subsequently advised other countries' Central Banks.
He advised the US Federal Trade Commission 1999-2001, was a Member of the UK Competition Commission from 2001-5, and remains on its Panel of Economic Advisors.
He participated in the meeting that drafted the Potsdam Memorandum to the 2007 UN Climate Change Conference in Bali; he is on the Environmental Economics Academic Panel to the UK’s Department of the Environment (Defra).