Matthew Rabin

Matthew Joel Rabin (born December 27, 1963) is an American economist. He is the Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Harvard Economics Department and Harvard Business School. Rabin's research focuses primarily on incorporating psychologically more realistic assumptions into empirically applicable formal economic theory. His topics of interest include errors in statistical reasoning and the evolution of beliefs, effects of choice context on exhibited preferences, reference-dependent preferences, and errors people make in inference in market and learning settings.^[3][4]

Matthew Rabin
Rabin in 2008
Born	(1963-12-27) December 27, 1963 (age 60)
Academic career
Field	Behavioral economics, Game theory
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison MIT
Doctoral advisor	Drew Fudenberg[1]
Doctoral students	Jeffrey C. Ely[2]
Contributions	Cursed equilibrium, Rabin fairness
Awards	John Bates Clark Medal John von Neumann Award
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Background

Rabin was the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley Economics Department for 25 years before moving to Harvard.^[3][5] He received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1984 and PhD in Economics from MIT in 1989.^[6] Before entering MIT, he was a research student at the London School of Economics.^[3] He is a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics Roundtable and co-organizer of the Russell Sage Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics.^[6] Rabin has also been a visiting professor at M.I.T., London School of Economics, Northwestern, Harvard, and Caltech, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Russell Sage Foundation.^[3][6]

His research is directed, among other economic fields, towards behavioral finance and behavioral economics. Rabin works on the economics of individual self-control problems, reference-dependent preferences, fairness motives and mistakes in probabilistic reasoning. He developed Rabin fairness as a model to account for fairness in social preferences. In 2001, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association^[7] and also the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.^[6] In 2006, he was awarded the John von Neumann Award by the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies.^[6]

References

1. Drew Fudenberg Students
2. "Ely's Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Retrieved 2018-03-31.
3. "Matthew Rabin - Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics". Harvard University. Retrieved October 27, 2014.
4. "The Pershing Square Foundation awards $17M to Harvard". Harvard Gazette. April 14, 2014. Retrieved October 27, 2014.
5. "Matthew Rabin". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on May 6, 2012.
6. "Matthew Rabin". University of Berkeley. Archived from the original on 2014-10-28.
7. "Matthew Rabin John Bates Clark Medalist 2001" (PDF). AEA. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-12.

External links

• Psychology and Economics An essay by Matthew Rabin
• In Honor of Matthew Rabin: Winner of the John Bates Clark Medal
• "Matthew Rabin". at JSTOR.