Misplaced Pages

Susan Athey: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from[REDACTED] with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 03:23, 23 March 2008 editPmilgrom (talk | contribs)18 editsm →Early life: Added names of PhD dissertation advisers.← Previous edit Latest revision as of 07:38, 5 January 2025 edit undoXuthoria (talk | contribs)87 editsNo edit summary 
(220 intermediate revisions by more than 100 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Short description|American economist}}
'''Susan Carleton Athey''' (born ], ]) is an ] ]. She is currently Professor of Economics at ] and the first female winner of the ].<ref name='priest'>{{cite news | first=Lisa | last=Priest | coauthors= | title=Economist who aided Canada wins top honour | date=April 23 2007 | publisher= | url =http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070423.wxeconomist23/BNStory/National/home | work =Globe&Mail, Toronto | pages = | accessdate = 2007-04-23 | language = }}</ref>
{{Infobox economist
| name = Susan Athey
| image = Susan Athey 15 (cropped).jpg
| image_size =
| alt =
| caption = Professor Susan Athey in 2020
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1970|11|29|mf=y}}
| birth_place = ], U.S.
| death_date =
| death_place =
| nationality = American
| institution = ]
| field = ]<br />]<br />]
| doctoral_advisor = ]<br />]<br />]
| academic_advisors =
| doctoral_students =
| notable_students =
| influences =
| influenced =
| contributions =
| awards = ] (2007)
| signature = <!-- file name only -->
| spouse = ]
| repec_prefix = e | repec_id = pat6
|education=] (])<br />] (])}}


'''Susan Carleton Athey''' (born November 1970)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/faculty-cv/susan-athey/cv-athey-carleton-susan-2020-sep-14.pdf|title=SUSAN CARLETON ATHEY : CV|website=Gsb.stanford.edu|access-date=June 8, 2022}}</ref> is an American economist. She is the Economics of Technology Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the ].<ref>{{cite web|title=Enriching the Experience|url=http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/new-faculty-2012.html|publisher=Stanford Graduate School of Business}}</ref> Prior to joining Stanford, she has been a professor at ] and the ].
== Early life ==
Susan Athey was born in ] and grew up in ].


Athey is the first female winner of the ].<ref name="priest">{{cite news | first=Lisa | last=Priest | title=Economist who aided Canada wins top honour | date=April 23, 2007 | url =https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070423.wxeconomist23/BNStory/National/home | work =Globe&Mail, Toronto | access-date = 2007-04-23 |archive-date=April 27, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070427132631/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070423.wxeconomist23/BNStory/National/home }}</ref> She served as the consulting chief economist for ] for six years<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Susan Athey|url=https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/susan-athey|access-date=2020-12-03|website=Stanford Graduate School of Business|language=en}}</ref> and was a consulting researcher to ]. She is currently on the boards of ], ], Rover, ], ], and non-profit ].<ref name=":0" /> She also serves as the senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She is an associate director for the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the director of Golub Capital Social Impact Lab.<ref name=":0" />
She attended ] from the age of 16. As an undergraduate at Duke, she completed three majors, in ], ], and ]. She got her start in economics research as a sophomore, working on problems related to ]s 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 ] club.


== Early life and education ==
She graduated with a Ph.D. from the ] at the age of 24, her thesis supervised by Professors ] and ].<ref name=priest/>
Athey was born in ], and grew up in ]. Her parents are Elizabeth Johansen, an English teacher and freelance editor, and Whit Athey, a physics scholar.


Athey attended ] for her undergraduate coursework. There, she completed three majors (], ], and ]) and graduated in 1991.<ref name=":0" /> Athey's interest in economics research can be attributed to a summer job where she prepared bids for a company that was selling personal computers to the government through procurement auctions. Working on problems related to ]s with Bob Marshall, a professor at Duke University who worked on defense procurement, she became his research assistant and subsequently inherited his passion for auction research. She was additionally involved in a number of leadership roles at Duke, including serving as treasurer of ] sorority and as president of the ] club.
== Academic career ==
Athey's first position was as an Assistant, Associate Professor and Castle Krob Career Development Chair at the ] for six years before returning to Stanford's Department of Economics as Professor holding the Holbrook Working Chair for another five years.


Athey graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from the ] in 1995.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/21/business/top-draft-pick-economics-professor-be-coveted-two-dozen-universities.html |title=The Top Draft Pick in Economics; A Professor-to-Be Coveted by Two Dozen Universities |newspaper=] |first=Sylvia |last=Nasar |author-link=Sylvia Nasar |date=April 21, 1995 }}</ref><ref name=":0" /> Her dissertation was supervised by ] and ].<ref name=priest/> Athey also received an honorary doctorate from Duke University.
== Contributions ==


Athey has been married to economist ] since 2002.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Simison |first1=Bob |title=Economist as Engineer |journal=] |publisher=] |date=June 2019 |volume=56 |issue=2 |url=https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/06/profile-stanford-economist-susan-athey-people.htm |access-date=23 December 2020}}</ref>
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.<ref>Wall Street Journal April 21-22, 2007</ref>


==Career==
== Professional Service ==
=== Academic career ===
{{BLP unreferenced section|date=November 2022}}
Athey's first position was as an assistant professor at the ], where she taught for six years, before returning to Stanford's Department of Economics as professor, where she held the Holbrook Working Chair for another five years. Then, she served as a professor of economics at Harvard University until 2012, before finally returning to the ], her alma mater and current employer.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Susan Athey {{!}} Biography, Career in Economics & JBC Medal {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Susan-Athey |access-date=2023-10-31 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>


===Applied auction research===
Susan Athey is the co-editor of the new American Economic Journals: Microeconomics published by the ]. 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 ] 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 ], the American Economic Association, and the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.
Auctions were the reason Athey went into economics. She has contributed on all dimensions to research on auctions. Athey's theoretical work on collusion in repeated games has been applied to auctions. She has performed significant empirical work in econometrics of auctions. In fact, her existence theorem for sets with private information has done an innovative job on the econometrics of auctions.


She also oversaw work that has had significant effects on business and public policy. Athey and Jonathan Levin examined the U.S. Forest Service's oral ascending auctions for the rights to cut timber in the national forests. Typically, a given tract contains several different species of timber-yielding trees. The Forest Service publishes an estimate of the proportions of the various species based on an inspection. Potential bidders then can conduct their inspections. Bids are multidimensional: amounts to be paid per unit for each species. The winner is determined by aggregating each bidder's offer using the Forest Service's estimated proportions. The actual amount the winner pays, however, is computed by applying the bid vector to the exact amounts that are ultimately harvested (the winner has two years to complete the harvest). These rules create an incentive for a bidder whose estimate of the proportions differs from that of the Forest Service to skew its bidding, which raises the bid for species that the bidder believes are less common than does the Forest Service. Conversely, it lowers the bid for the species that the bidder believes are more common than does the Forest Service. For example, suppose there are two species and the Forest Service estimates that they are in equal proportions, but a bidder believes they are in dimensions 3:2. Then bids of ($100, $100) and ($50, $150) yield the same amount under the Forest Service proportions and so are equally likely to win, but the bidder's expected payments under the first and under the second differ.<ref name="jstor.org">Roberts, John. “Susan C. Athey: John Bates Clark Award Winner 2007.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 22, no. 4, 2008, pp. 181–198. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27648283.</ref>
== Awards and Honors ==
Susan Athey has received the following awards:
* ] 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-


One of Athey's best-known works that deals with auctions is called “Comparing Open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Theory and Evidence from Timber Auctions." In this paper, Athey works with Johnathan Levin and Enrique Seira. She and her peers were interested in testing to see if the participation effects on auction were important. There are two types of auctions, open and sealed-bid auctions. Open auctions are where bidders are constantly outbidding one another until the last bidder gives up and the auction ends, and sealed-bid auctions are when individuals write down their bids and submit them, whoever has the highest bid wins. The data that they used came from the United States Forest Service auctions. Their results indicated that participation type matters. It even matters more than what is actually taking place during the auctioning process.<ref>{{Cite report |url=http://www.nber.org/papers/w14590.pdf |title=Comparing Open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Evidence from Timber Auctions |last1=Athey |first1=Susan |last2=Levin |first2=Jonathan |date=December 2008 |publisher=National Bureau of Economic Research |issue=w14590 |doi=10.3386/w14590 |location=Cambridge, MA |language=en |last3=Seira |first3=Enrique}}</ref>
== Publications ==
1. "Collusion with Persistent Cost Shocks," (with Kyle Bagwell). Accepted subject to final revisions, Econometrica.


=== Digital marketplace research ===
2. "Efficiency in Repeated Trade with Hidden Valuations," (with David Miller). Accepted subject to final revisions, Theoretical Economics.
With Athey's multidisciplinary education, it comes as no surprise that she would take interest in the digital marketplace. However, her ultimate goal in her contributions to technology and the digital marketplace is to improve the social impact of them. Pioneering the field alongside Google's Hal Varian, Athey was one of the first coined "tech economists." She cites this to be one of her proudest lifetime accomplishments.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Economist as Engineer: Profile of Stanford's Susan Athey – IMF F&D |url=https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2019/06/profile-stanford-economist-susan-athey-people |access-date=2023-10-31 |website=IMF |language=en}}</ref>


Athey is able to hone her skills from different fields to create an amalgamation of machine learning and market design which is leveraged to make sense of and improve the social impact of technology. In some of her more recent research, Athey applies these techniques to the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing the effectiveness of social media advertising in influencing the beliefs surrounding COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, Athey was able to conclude that the average cost of influencing a person in favor of the vaccine was $3.41. This, coupled with an estimated vaccine cost of $5.68, provided empirical evidence for the cost-effectiveness of using social media campaigns to influence the vaccination rate.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Athey |first1=Susan |last2=Grabarz |first2=Kristen |last3=Luca |first3=Michael |last4=Wernerfelt |first4=Nils |date=2023-01-31 |title=Digital public health interventions at scale: The impact of social media advertising on beliefs and outcomes related to COVID vaccines |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |language=en |volume=120 |issue=5 |pages=e2208110120 |doi=10.1073/pnas.2208110120 |issn=0027-8424 |pmc=9945974 |pmid=36701366}}</ref>
3. "Discrete Choice Models with Multiple Unobserved Choice Characteristics," (with Guido Imbens). Accepted subject to final revisions, International Economic Review.


Her passion for using machine learning to advance the alleviation of societal issues led her to become the faculty director of the Stanford Business School's Initiative for Shared Prosperity and Innovation (ISPI). This project utilizes technology to address social problems like poverty, inequality, and, as aforementioned, COVID-19. The Initiative's mechanism for doing this is to apply machine learning methods to technology companies with the eventual result of improving methods for measuring impact. As technology companies rapidly and incrementally improve using data collection methods, it is increasingly important that they do this more efficiently by being more accurate in their impact measurements. When companies implement these machine learning tactics, they become more efficient; this is particularly important because they are legitimized to potential investors, which helps secure funding. This is particularly important in the case of social impact projects, which oftentimes rely on volatile forms of investment like philanthropic or governmental funding.<ref name=":1" />
4. "Identification and Inference in Nonlinear Difference-In-Difference Models," (with Guido Imbens). Econometrica 74 (2), March, 2006, 431-498.


=== Research contributions ===
5. "The Optimal Degree of Monetary Policy Discretion," (with Andrew Atkeson and Patrick Kehoe), Econometrica 73 (5), September, 2005, 1431-1476.
Athey's early contributions included a new way to model uncertainty (the subject of her doctoral dissertation) and understand investor behavior given uncertainty, along with insights into the behavior of auctions. Athey's research on decision-making under uncertainty focused on conditions under which optimal decision policies would be monotone in a given parameter. She applied her results to establish conditions under which ] would exist in auctions and other Bayesian games.


Athey's work changed the way auctions are held. In the early 1990s Athey uncovered the weaknesses of an overly lenient dispute mechanism through experiences selling computers to the U.S. government at auctions, discovering that open auctions which resulted in frequent legal disputes followed by settlements were actually rife with collusion (e.g., auction winners shared a portion of their spoils with losers who had cooperated in bidding).<ref>{{cite news |first=Mark |last=Whitehouse |title=Economist Breaks New Ground As First Female Winner of Top Prize |url= https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB117708892644877101 |work=] |date=2007-04-21 |access-date=2008-06-20}}</ref> She also aided British Columbia in the design of their pricing system used for publicly owned timber.<ref name='priest'/> In addition, Athey published articles about auctions for online advertising and advised Microsoft about the design of their search advertising auctions.<ref>{{cite news |first=Aki |last=Ito |title=Stanford Economist Musters Big Data To Shape Web Future | date=June 26, 2013 | publisher = Bloomberg | url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-26/stanford-economist-musters-big-data-to-shape-web-future.html }}</ref>
6. "Collusion and Price Rigidity," (with Kyle Bagwell and Chris Sanchirico). Review of Economic Studies 71 (2), April 2004, 317-349.


=== Professional service ===
7. "Identification in Standard Auction Models," (with Philip Haile), Econometrica, 70 (6), November 2002, pp. 2107-2140.
]
Athey has served as an associate editor of several leading journals, including the '']'', '']'', and the '']'', as well as the ] economics panel, and she also served as an associate editor for '']'', '']'', and the '']''. She is a past co-editor of the ''Journal of Economics and Management Strategy'' and '']: Microeconomics''. She was the chair of the program committee for the 2006 North American Winter Meetings, and has served on numerous committees for the ], the ], and the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She is a member of President Obama's Committee for the ].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/committee.jsp|title=US NSF – Office of the Director – National Medal of Science – President's Committee|website=Nsf.gov|access-date=8 June 2022}}</ref>


Furthermore, besides professional services in academic committees, Athey, as a "tech economist," also used to serve as consultant chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for a few years and now serves on the board of Expedia, Lending Club, Rover Turo, and Ripple. She also serves as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system. Athey is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and serves as the associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Susan Athey|url=https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/susan-athey|access-date=2020-12-11|website=Stanford Graduate School of Business|language=en}}</ref>
8. "The Impact of Information Technology on Emergency Health Care Outcomes," (with Scott Stern), RAND Journal of Economics, 33 (3), Autumn 2002, pp. 399-432.


== Awards and honors ==
9. "Monotone Comparative Statics Under Uncertainty," Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2002, CXVII (1): 187-223.
=== Academic ===
*Duke University Alice Baldwin Memorial Scholarship, 1990–1991
*Mary Love Collins Scholarship, Chi Omega Foundation, 1991–1992
*Jaedicke Scholar, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1992–1993
*National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1991–1994
*State Farm Dissertation Award in Business, 1994
* State Farm Dissertation Award (1995)
* ] (2000) (This award is given every other year to a young woman economist who has made outstanding contributions to any field.)
* Fellow of the Econometric Society (2004)
*] (2007)
* Fellow of the ] (2008)<ref>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=27 April 2011}}</ref>
* Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship
* Elected to the ] (2012)
* Honorary Degree, Duke University (2009) <ref>{{cite web|title=Duke Names Honorary Degree Recipients|date=21 January 2009 |url=http://today.duke.edu/2009/01/honorary.html|publisher=Duke University|access-date=1 June 2014}}</ref>
* Fisher-Shultz Lecture, Econometric Society (2011)
*Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2016)<ref>{{Cite web|date=2018-06-05|title=Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize|url=https://www.tse-fr.eu/jjl-prize|access-date=2020-12-03|website=Tse-fr.eu|language=en}}</ref>
*] (2019) <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.eventbrite.com/e/77640774647?aff=efbneb|title= Digitization and the Economy – John von Neumann Award Ceremony: Susan Athey|website=Eventbrit.come|access-date=8 June 2022}}</ref>
*] – ] Prize (2019)<ref>{{Cite web|title=Mathematical Sciences Research Institute|url=http://www.msri.org/|access-date=2021-06-07|website=Msri.org}}</ref>
* Honorary Doctorate, ] (2022)


=== Non-academic ===
10. "Optimal Collusion with Private Information," (with Kyle Bagwell), RAND Journal of Economics, Autumn 2001, 32 (3): 428-465.
* Kilby Award Foundation's Young Innovator Award, 1998
* Diversity MBA's Top 100 under 50 Diverse Executives
* Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business
* World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, selected 2008
* World Innovation Summit on Entrepreneurship and Innovation's World's Most Innovative People Award, 2012
* Microsoft Research Distinguished Collaborator Award, 2016


== Publications ==
11. "Single Crossing Properties and the Existence of Pure Strategy Equilibria in Games of Incomplete Information," Econometrica 69 (4), July, 2001: 861-890.
<ref name="jstor.org"/>
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Segal, Ilya|author2-link=Ilya Segal|year=2013 |title=An Efficient Dynamic Mechanism |journal=] |volume=81 |issue=6 |pages=2463–2485 |doi= 10.3982/ECTA6995|citeseerx=10.1.1.79.7416}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Coey, Dominic|author3=Levin, Jonathan |year=2011 |title=Setasides and Subsidies in Timber Auctions |journal=American Economic Journal: Microeconomics |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=1–27 |doi= 10.1257/mic.5.1.1|s2cid=3012150|url=http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mic/app/2011-0124_app.pdf }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Ellison, Glenn| year=2011 |title=Position Auctions with Consumer Search |journal=] | volume=126 | issue=3 |pages=1213–1270|doi=10.1093/qje/qjr028|url=http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/126/3/1213.abstract?sid=5bde2bed-cba5-4185-afe5-8264d6e19f6c |citeseerx=10.1.1.163.9337|s2cid=8681024}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Levin, Jonathan|author3=Seira, Enrique |year=2011 |title=Comparing Open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Theory and Evidence from Timber Auctions |journal=] |volume=126 |issue=1 |pages=207–257 |doi= 10.1093/qje/qjq001|s2cid=14478418|url= http://www.nber.org/papers/w14590.pdf}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Bagwell, Kyle |year=2008 |title=Collusion with Persistent Cost Shocks |journal=] |volume=76 |issue=3 |pages=493–540 |doi= 10.1111/j.1468-0262.2008.00845.x|citeseerx=10.1.1.615.7881}} (Accepted subject to final revisions)
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Miller, David |year=2007 |title=Efficiency in Repeated Trade with Hidden Valuations |journal=] |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=299–354 |doi= 10.1007/978-3-540-73746-9|url=http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/view/20070299 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Imbens, Guido W. |year=2007 |title=Discrete Choice Models with Multiple Unobserved Choice Characteristics |journal=] |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=1159–1192 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-2354.2007.00458.x |citeseerx=10.1.1.164.935|s2cid=12392783}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Imbens, Guido W. |year=2006 |title=Identification and Inference in Nonlinear Difference-In-Difference Models |journal=Econometrica |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=431–498 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00668.x |citeseerx=10.1.1.79.5356}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1 |author2=Atkeson, Andrew |author3=Kehoe, Patrick J. |year=2005 |title=The Optimal Degree of Monetary Policy Discretion |journal=Econometrica |volume=73 |issue=5 |pages=1431–1476 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0262.2005.00626.x |s2cid=5996103|url= http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10054404/|hdl=10419/152772 |hdl-access=free }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1 |author2=Bagwell, Kyle |author3=Sanchirico, Chris |author3-link=Chris William Sanchirico |year=2004 |title=Collusion and Price Rigidity |journal=] |volume=71 |issue=2 |pages=317–349 |doi=10.1111/0034-6527.00286 |citeseerx=10.1.1.25.2035}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Haile, Philip |year=2002 |title=Identification in Standard Auction Models |journal=Econometrica |volume=70 |issue=6 |pages=2107–2140 |doi=10.1111/1468-0262.00371 |citeseerx=10.1.1.217.1365}}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey |first=Susan |author-mask=1 |author2=Stern, Scott |year=2002 |title=The Impact of Information Technology on Emergency Health Care Outcomes |journal=RAND Journal of Economics |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=399–432 |doi=10.3386/W7887 |url=http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/2002/Autumn_2002._pp._Athey.html |pmid=12585298 |jstor=3087465 |citeseerx=10.1.1.15.1325 |s2cid=6398638 |access-date=2008-04-14 |archive-date=2006-09-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060927123645/http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/2002/Autumn_2002._pp._Athey.html |url-status=dead }}
* {{cite journal |year=2002 |title=Monotone Comparative Statics Under Uncertainty |journal=] |volume=117 |issue=1 |pages=187–223 |doi=10.1162/003355302753399481 |url= http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3372263|last1=Athey |first1=S. |s2cid=14098229 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey |first=Susan |author-mask=1 |author2=Bagwell, Kyle |year=2001 |title=Optimal Collusion with Private Information |journal=RAND Journal of Economics |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=428–465 |url=http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/2001/Autumn_2001._pp._Athey.html |jstor=2696363 |hdl=1721.1/63939 |citeseerx=10.1.1.727.384 |access-date=2008-04-14 |archive-date=2008-06-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080626111957/http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/2001/Autumn_2001._pp._Athey.html |url-status=dead }}
* {{cite journal |year=2001 |title=Single Crossing Properties and the Existence of Pure Strategy Equilibria in Games of Incomplete Information |journal=Econometrica |volume=69 |issue=4 |pages=861–890 |doi=10.1111/1468-0262.00223 |citeseerx=10.1.1.35.2 |last1=Athey |first1=Susan }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey|first=Susan|author-mask=1|author2=Levin, Jonathan |year=2001 |title=Information and Competition in U.S. Forest Service Timber Auctions |journal=] |volume=109 |issue=2 |pages=375–417 |doi=10.1086/319558 |url= http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3612768|hdl=1721.1/63772|s2cid=158932760|hdl-access=free }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey |first=Susan |author-mask=1 |author2=Schmutzler, Armin |year=2001 |title=Investment and Market Dominance |journal=RAND Journal of Economics |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=1–26 |url=http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/2001/Spring_2001._pp._Athey.html |jstor=2696395 |citeseerx=10.1.1.190.4998 |access-date=2008-04-14 |archive-date=2006-09-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060927101744/http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/2001/Spring_2001._pp._Athey.html |url-status=dead }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey |first=Susan |author-mask=1 |author2=Avery, Chris |author3=Zemsky, Peter |year=2000 |title=Mentoring and Diversity |journal=] |volume=90 |issue=4 |pages=765–786 |doi=10.1257/aer.90.4.765 |url=http://www.e-aer.org/archive/9004/90040765.pdf }}{{Dead link|date=February 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* {{cite journal |last=Athey |first=Susan |author-mask=1 |author2=Schmutzler, Armin |year=1995 |title=Product and Process Flexibility in an Innovative Environment |journal=RAND Journal of Economics |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=557–574 |url=http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/1995/Winter_1995._pp_557_574.html |jstor=2556006 |access-date=2008-04-14 |archive-date=2006-09-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060927114552/http://www.rje.org/abstracts/abstracts/1995/Winter_1995._pp_557_574.html |url-status=dead }}


== References ==
12. "Information and Competition in U.S. Forest Service Timber Auctions," (with Jonathan Levin), Journal of Political Economy, 109 (2), April 2001. Reprinted in: Empirical Industrial Organization, Paul Joskow and Michael Waterson, ed., Critical Ideas in Economics, Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2004.
{{Reflist}}


== External links ==
13. "Investment and Market Dominance," (with Armin Schmutzler), RAND Journal of Economics 32 (1), Spring 2001: 1-26.
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161111215821/http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/athey/ |date=2016-11-11 }}
* by David Warsh of Economic Principals
* by Joshua Gans in the Stanford Business Magazine, August 2007
* {{Google scholar id}}


{{s-start}}
14. "Mentoring and Diversity," (with Chris Avery and Peter Zemsky), American Economic Review 90 (4) September 2000: 765-786.
{{s-aca}}
{{s-bef|before=]}}
{{s-ttl|title=President of the ]|years=2023–2024}}
{{s-aft|after=]}}
{{s-end}}


{{Elaine Bennett Research Prize recipients}}
15. "Product and Process Flexibility in an Innovative Environment, "(with Armin Schmutzler), RAND Journal of Economics, 26 (4) Winter1995: 557-574.
{{John Bates Clark Medal recipients}}
{{John von Neumann Award recipients}}
{{Presidents of the American Economic Association}}


{{Authority control}}
==Notes==
{{reflist}}

* "Economist Cracks a Glass Ceiling as First Female Winner of Top Prize" Wall Street Journal April 21-22, 2007

== External links ==
* http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~athey/index.html Athey's Homepage
* http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/07.04.22.html Biographical article on Athey by David Warsh of Economic Principals
* http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0708/kn-athey.html Reflections by Joshua Gans in the Stanford Business Magazine, August 2007


{{DEFAULTSORT:Athey, Susan}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Athey, Susan}}
] ]
] ]
] ]
] ]
] ]
] ]
] ]
]
]
]
]
]
] ]
] ]
]
]
] ]
] ]
] ]
]

]
]

Latest revision as of 07:38, 5 January 2025

American economist
Susan Athey
Professor Susan Athey in 2020
Born (1970-11-29) November 29, 1970 (age 54)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationDuke University (BA)
Stanford University (PhD)
SpouseGuido Imbens
Academic career
FieldMicroeconomics
Econometrics
Machine Learning
InstitutionStanford University
Doctoral
advisor		Paul Milgrom
Donald John Roberts
Edward Lazear
AwardsJohn Bates Clark Medal (2007)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Susan Carleton Athey (born November 1970) is an American economist. She is the Economics of Technology Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining Stanford, she has been a professor at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Athey is the first female winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. She served as the consulting chief economist for Microsoft for six years and was a consulting researcher to Microsoft Research. She is currently on the boards of Expedia, Lending Club, Rover, Turo, Ripple, and non-profit Innovations for Poverty Action. She also serves as the senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She is an associate director for the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the director of Golub Capital Social Impact Lab.

Early life and education

Athey was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Rockville, Maryland. Her parents are Elizabeth Johansen, an English teacher and freelance editor, and Whit Athey, a physics scholar.

Athey attended Duke University for her undergraduate coursework. There, she completed three majors (economics, mathematics, and computer science) and graduated in 1991. Athey's interest in economics research can be attributed to a summer job where she prepared bids for a company that was selling personal computers to the government through procurement auctions. Working on problems related to auctions with Bob Marshall, a professor at Duke University who worked on defense procurement, she became his research assistant and subsequently inherited his passion for auction research. She was additionally involved in a number of leadership roles at Duke, including serving as treasurer of Chi Omega sorority and as president of the field hockey club.

Athey graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1995. Her dissertation was supervised by Paul Milgrom and Donald John Roberts. Athey also received an honorary doctorate from Duke University.

Athey has been married to economist Guido Imbens since 2002.

Career

Academic career

This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately.
Find sources: "Susan Athey" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Athey's first position was as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she taught for six years, before returning to Stanford's Department of Economics as professor, where she held the Holbrook Working Chair for another five years. Then, she served as a professor of economics at Harvard University until 2012, before finally returning to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, her alma mater and current employer.

Applied auction research

Auctions were the reason Athey went into economics. She has contributed on all dimensions to research on auctions. Athey's theoretical work on collusion in repeated games has been applied to auctions. She has performed significant empirical work in econometrics of auctions. In fact, her existence theorem for sets with private information has done an innovative job on the econometrics of auctions.

She also oversaw work that has had significant effects on business and public policy. Athey and Jonathan Levin examined the U.S. Forest Service's oral ascending auctions for the rights to cut timber in the national forests. Typically, a given tract contains several different species of timber-yielding trees. The Forest Service publishes an estimate of the proportions of the various species based on an inspection. Potential bidders then can conduct their inspections. Bids are multidimensional: amounts to be paid per unit for each species. The winner is determined by aggregating each bidder's offer using the Forest Service's estimated proportions. The actual amount the winner pays, however, is computed by applying the bid vector to the exact amounts that are ultimately harvested (the winner has two years to complete the harvest). These rules create an incentive for a bidder whose estimate of the proportions differs from that of the Forest Service to skew its bidding, which raises the bid for species that the bidder believes are less common than does the Forest Service. Conversely, it lowers the bid for the species that the bidder believes are more common than does the Forest Service. For example, suppose there are two species and the Forest Service estimates that they are in equal proportions, but a bidder believes they are in dimensions 3:2. Then bids of ($100, $100) and ($50, $150) yield the same amount under the Forest Service proportions and so are equally likely to win, but the bidder's expected payments under the first and under the second differ.

One of Athey's best-known works that deals with auctions is called “Comparing Open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Theory and Evidence from Timber Auctions." In this paper, Athey works with Johnathan Levin and Enrique Seira. She and her peers were interested in testing to see if the participation effects on auction were important. There are two types of auctions, open and sealed-bid auctions. Open auctions are where bidders are constantly outbidding one another until the last bidder gives up and the auction ends, and sealed-bid auctions are when individuals write down their bids and submit them, whoever has the highest bid wins. The data that they used came from the United States Forest Service auctions. Their results indicated that participation type matters. It even matters more than what is actually taking place during the auctioning process.

Digital marketplace research

With Athey's multidisciplinary education, it comes as no surprise that she would take interest in the digital marketplace. However, her ultimate goal in her contributions to technology and the digital marketplace is to improve the social impact of them. Pioneering the field alongside Google's Hal Varian, Athey was one of the first coined "tech economists." She cites this to be one of her proudest lifetime accomplishments.

Athey is able to hone her skills from different fields to create an amalgamation of machine learning and market design which is leveraged to make sense of and improve the social impact of technology. In some of her more recent research, Athey applies these techniques to the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing the effectiveness of social media advertising in influencing the beliefs surrounding COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, Athey was able to conclude that the average cost of influencing a person in favor of the vaccine was $3.41. This, coupled with an estimated vaccine cost of $5.68, provided empirical evidence for the cost-effectiveness of using social media campaigns to influence the vaccination rate.

Her passion for using machine learning to advance the alleviation of societal issues led her to become the faculty director of the Stanford Business School's Initiative for Shared Prosperity and Innovation (ISPI). This project utilizes technology to address social problems like poverty, inequality, and, as aforementioned, COVID-19. The Initiative's mechanism for doing this is to apply machine learning methods to technology companies with the eventual result of improving methods for measuring impact. As technology companies rapidly and incrementally improve using data collection methods, it is increasingly important that they do this more efficiently by being more accurate in their impact measurements. When companies implement these machine learning tactics, they become more efficient; this is particularly important because they are legitimized to potential investors, which helps secure funding. This is particularly important in the case of social impact projects, which oftentimes rely on volatile forms of investment like philanthropic or governmental funding.

Research contributions

Athey's early contributions included a new way to model uncertainty (the subject of her doctoral dissertation) and understand investor behavior given uncertainty, along with insights into the behavior of auctions. Athey's research on decision-making under uncertainty focused on conditions under which optimal decision policies would be monotone in a given parameter. She applied her results to establish conditions under which Nash equilibria would exist in auctions and other Bayesian games.

Athey's work changed the way auctions are held. In the early 1990s Athey uncovered the weaknesses of an overly lenient dispute mechanism through experiences selling computers to the U.S. government at auctions, discovering that open auctions which resulted in frequent legal disputes followed by settlements were actually rife with collusion (e.g., auction winners shared a portion of their spoils with losers who had cooperated in bidding). She also aided British Columbia in the design of their pricing system used for publicly owned timber. In addition, Athey published articles about auctions for online advertising and advised Microsoft about the design of their search advertising auctions.

Professional service

Susan Athey at AEA 2025 in San Francisco (Jan 3, 2025)

Athey 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 also served as an associate editor for Econometrica, Theoretical Economics, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. She is a past co-editor of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. She was the chair of the program committee for the 2006 North American Winter Meetings, and 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. She is a member of President Obama's Committee for the National Medal of Science.

Furthermore, besides professional services in academic committees, Athey, as a "tech economist," also used to serve as consultant chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for a few years and now serves on the board of Expedia, Lending Club, Rover Turo, and Ripple. She also serves as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system. Athey is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and serves as the associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

Awards and honors

Academic

  • Duke University Alice Baldwin Memorial Scholarship, 1990–1991
  • Mary Love Collins Scholarship, Chi Omega Foundation, 1991–1992
  • Jaedicke Scholar, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1992–1993
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1991–1994
  • State Farm Dissertation Award in Business, 1994
  • State Farm Dissertation Award (1995)
  • Elaine Bennett Research Prize (2000) (This award is given every other year to a young woman economist who has made outstanding contributions to any field.)
  • Fellow of the Econometric Society (2004)
  • John Bates Clark Medal (2007)
  • Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008)
  • Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship
  • Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2012)
  • Honorary Degree, Duke University (2009)
  • Fisher-Shultz Lecture, Econometric Society (2011)
  • Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2016)
  • John von Neumann Award (2019)
  • CME Group – MSRI Prize (2019)
  • Honorary Doctorate, London Business School (2022)

Non-academic

  • Kilby Award Foundation's Young Innovator Award, 1998
  • Diversity MBA's Top 100 under 50 Diverse Executives
  • Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business
  • World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, selected 2008
  • World Innovation Summit on Entrepreneurship and Innovation's World's Most Innovative People Award, 2012
  • Microsoft Research Distinguished Collaborator Award, 2016

Publications

References

  1. "SUSAN CARLETON ATHEY : CV" (PDF). Gsb.stanford.edu. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  2. "Enriching the Experience". Stanford Graduate School of Business.
  3. ^ Priest, Lisa (April 23, 2007). "Economist who aided Canada wins top honour". Globe&Mail, Toronto. Archived from the original on April 27, 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-23.
  4. ^ "Susan Athey". Stanford Graduate School of Business. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  5. Nasar, Sylvia (April 21, 1995). "The Top Draft Pick in Economics; A Professor-to-Be Coveted by Two Dozen Universities". New York Times.
  6. Simison, Bob (June 2019). "Economist as Engineer". Finance & Development. 56 (2). International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  7. "Susan Athey | Biography, Career in Economics & JBC Medal | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2023-10-31.
  8. ^ Roberts, John. “Susan C. Athey: John Bates Clark Award Winner 2007.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 22, no. 4, 2008, pp. 181–198. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27648283.
  9. Athey, Susan; Levin, Jonathan; Seira, Enrique (December 2008). Comparing Open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Evidence from Timber Auctions (PDF) (Report). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w14590.
  10. ^ "Economist as Engineer: Profile of Stanford's Susan Athey – IMF F&D". IMF. Retrieved 2023-10-31.
  11. Athey, Susan; Grabarz, Kristen; Luca, Michael; Wernerfelt, Nils (2023-01-31). "Digital public health interventions at scale: The impact of social media advertising on beliefs and outcomes related to COVID vaccines". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 120 (5): e2208110120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2208110120. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 9945974. PMID 36701366.
  12. Whitehouse, Mark (2007-04-21). "Economist Breaks New Ground As First Female Winner of Top Prize". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-06-20.
  13. Ito, Aki (June 26, 2013). "Stanford Economist Musters Big Data To Shape Web Future". Bloomberg.
  14. "US NSF – Office of the Director – National Medal of Science – President's Committee". Nsf.gov. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  15. "Susan Athey". Stanford Graduate School of Business. Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  16. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  17. "Duke Names Honorary Degree Recipients". Duke University. 21 January 2009. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
  18. "Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize". Tse-fr.eu. 2018-06-05. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  19. "[SOLD OUT] Digitization and the Economy – John von Neumann Award Ceremony: Susan Athey". Eventbrit.come. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  20. "Mathematical Sciences Research Institute". Msri.org. Retrieved 2021-06-07.

External links

Academic offices
Preceded byChristina Romer President of the American Economic Association
2023–2024 		Succeeded byJanet Currie
Elaine Bennett Research Prize recipients
John Bates Clark Medal recipients
John von Neumann Award recipients
Presidents of the American Economic Association
1886–1900
1901–1925
1926–1950
1951–1975
1976–2000
2001–present
Categories:
Susan Athey: Difference between revisions Add topic