Welcome!

I am a Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Economics and a Professor of Information Science at Cornell University. I am also the Associate Deanfor Academic Affairs in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. I earned my B.A. at Washington University in St. Louis, where I was introduced to economic theory by Bob Parks, with whom I went down the delightful rabbit hole of social choice theory, by Jim Barr and Trout Rader, and to empirical work by Ted Bergstrom. I was introduced to economic history and to archival research by Alice Hanson Jones, as an assistant for her groundbreaking study of the distribution of wealth among the European population of the 13 colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. I wrote on temporary equilibrium (remember that?) under Gerard Debreu for my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley after spending a year trying to find a question in cooperative game theory that I could answer and that Lloyd Shapley hadn't already in his famous file cabinets.

I still work in economic theory. I am one among the last general equilibrium theorists. I also have written in game theory, on both evolutionary and what Ken Binmore has called “eductive” topics. I am particularly interested in social networks. I also have interests that are more than avocational but not quite professisonal in philosophy, especially moral philosophy and causation, and in the history of economic thought.

If you are interested in working with me, please look at my research page and read this before writing me.