Michael Waldman Biography

Michael Waldman – Short Bio

Michael Waldman received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from MIT in 1977 and a Ph.D. from the Economics Department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He then took his first academic job in 1983 which was as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA (in the 1982-1983 he had a post-doc position at UCLA). At UCLA he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1989. In 1991 he moved to the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University as a Full Professor of Economics. He was given the Charles H. Dyson Chair in Management in 1997. Professor Waldman has also visited Yale’s School of Organization and Management and Chicago’s Graduate School of Business where he was the John M. Olin Visiting Professor during the 1997-98 academic year.

Professor Waldman’s main research area is applied microeconomic theory, where his main fields of interest are industrial organization and organizational economics. In these areas he is best known for his work on learning and signaling in labor markets, the operation of durable goods markets, and the strategic use of tying and bundling in product markets. In addition to his work in these two main areas, Professor Waldman has also conducted research on a diverse set of topics including the role of expectational shocks in business cycle fluctuations, the role of tied transfers in family and government decision making, how the theory of natural selection can explain systematic errors in decision making, and the ramifications of limitedly rational behavior for market outcomes.

Professor Waldman has published in many of the top journals in economics including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Journal of Labor Economics. He is listed in both the 3^rd and 4^th editions of Who’s Who in Economics and in various editions of Marquis Who’s Who in America, Marquis Who’s Who in the World, and Marquis Who’s Who in Science and Engineering. Professor Waldman is currently a Co-Editor at the Journal of Economic Perspectives and an Associate Editor at the Quarterly Journal of Economics.