February 10, 2006 | Volume 34, Number 18

Philip Haile is named the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics

Philip Haile, who has assumed the post of Ford Foundation Professor of Economics, is a specialist in industrial organization, applied microeconometrics and applied microeconomic theory, with a special interest in auctions.

Haile is director of the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale, which seeks to encourage research in economics and related fields — particularly, the development and application of rigorous logical, mathematical and statistical methods of analysis.

Haile's research combines theoretical and empirical approaches, often focusing on auctions as market institutions in which strategic behavior and informational asymmetries play prominent roles. In his recent work he has studied the effects of resale opportunities on bidding; identification and testing of auction models; the use of robust restrictions of economic theory as the basis for empirical analysis and policy evaluation; and the importance of the "winner's curse" in U.S. Forest Service timber auctions.

The recipient of an A.B. from Duke University and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, both in economics, Haile served on the faculty of the University of WisconsinMadison as assistant professor 1996–2002 and as professor 2002–2003. While there, he was a Vilas Associate in 2003 and a Shoemaker Fellow 2002–2003, and won the Department of Economics' McKenzie Prize for his research. He was twice the co-recipient of the Christensen Award for Empirical Economics for work with graduate students, and also received the Economics Student Association's Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Haile came to Yale's Department of Economics as a professor in 2003. He was named director of the Cowles Foundation in 2005. Here, he teaches courses in industrial organization at both the undergraduate and Ph.D. level.

A faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research since 2001, Haile was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow 2002–2006 and visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago 2001–2002. The economist's research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ameritech Foundation and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Haile's professional activities have included serving on the Human and Social Dynamics Advisory Panel for the National Science Foundation, on the program committees for several professional meetings, and as associate editor of the Journal of Industrial Economics. He is currently an editor of the RAND Journal of Economics.