Michael Spence

Andrew Michael Spence (born November 7, 1943, Montclair, New Jersey) is a Canadian-American economist and Nobel laureate.[3]

Michael Spence
Spence in 2008
Born	November 7, 1943 [1] Montclair, New Jersey, USA
Nationality	United States
Institution	Harvard University Stanford University SDA Bocconi School of Management New York University
Field	Microeconomics, labor economics
Alma mater	Harvard University, (Ph.D.) University of Oxford, (B.A.) Princeton University, (B.A.)
Doctoral advisor	Kenneth Arrow[2] Thomas Schelling[2]
Influences	Richard Zeckhauser
Contributions	Signaling theory
Awards	John Bates Clark Medal (1981) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2001)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Spence is the William R. Berkley Professor in Economics and Business at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and the Philip H. Knight Professor of Management, Emeritus, and Dean, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.[4][5]

Together with George A. Akerlof and Joseph E. Stiglitz, Spence is a co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information."

Career

Spence is noted for his job-market signaling model, which inspired research into this branch of contract theory. In this model, employees signal their respective skills to employers by acquiring a certain degree of education, which is costly to them. Employers will pay higher wages to more educated employees, because they know that the proportion of employees with high abilities is higher among the educated ones, as it is less costly for them to acquire education than it is for employees with low abilities. For the model to work, it is not even necessary for education to have any intrinsic value if it can convey information about the sender (employee) to the recipient (employer) and if the signal is costly.

Spence received his middle and high school education at the University of Toronto Schools of the University of Toronto. Spence attended Princeton University as an undergraduate student and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy in 1966, completing a senior thesis titled "Freedom and Determinism".[6] Spence then studied at Magdalen College, University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and received a B.A./M.A. in mathematics in 1968.[7] Spence then began graduate studies in economics at Harvard University with the support of a Danforth Graduate Fellowship in the fall of 1968. He received a Ph.D. in economics in 1972, completing a dissertation titled "Market signalling" under the supervision of Kenneth Arrow and Thomas C. Schelling.[8] Spence was awarded the David A. Wells Prize for outstanding doctoral dissertation in 1972.

He is the Chairman of the Commission on Growth and Development, and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.[9]

Spence joined the faculty of New York University's Stern School of Business on September 1, 2010.[10] He joined the faculty of SDA Bocconi School of Management in Italy in July 2011.[11]

He is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business. Spence is also a Commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance.[12][13] Additionally, Spence is also a member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council.[14][15]

He is the author of three books and 50 articles, and has also been a consistent contributor to Project Syndicate, an international newspaper syndicate, since 2008. Among his beliefs are that high-frequency trading should be banned.[16]

Spence had both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in a graduate-level economics class at Harvard. In a 1999 Fortune interview, however, Gates and Ballmer admitted not attending class and passing only after cramming for four days before the final.[17]

Honors and awards

Spence is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.[18] He was the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, as well as the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economics Association in 1981.[19]

Spence was elected as a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1976 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983.[20][21]

Selected works

• Spence, Michael (1973). "Job Market Signaling". Quarterly Journal of Economics. 87 (3): 355–374. doi:10.2307/1882010. JSTOR 1882010.
• Market Signaling: Informational Transfer in Hiring and Related Screening Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1974. ISBN 978-0674549906.
• The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. May 2011. ISBN 9781429968713.

Personal life

Spence currently lives in Milan, Italy with his wife and children.

See also

• List of economists

References

1. "A. Michael Spence – Facts". NobelPrize.org.
2. Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets Nobel Lecture Retrieved September 12, 2016.
3. "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2001". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 2018-11-07.
4. Economics, -William R. Berkley Professor in; Business. "NYU Stern - A. Spence - William R. Berkley Professor in Economics & Business". www.stern.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
5. "A. Michael Spence". Stanford Graduate School of Business. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
6. Spence, Andrew Michael (1966). "Freedom and Determinism". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
7. "Professor A. Michael Spence | Magdalen College Oxford". www.magd.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
8. hollis.harvard.edu https://hollis.harvard.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=HVD2&search_scope=everything&tab=everything&lang=en_US&docid=01HVD_ALMA211904693260003941. Retrieved 2020-05-12. Missing or empty |title= (help)
9. "A. Michael Spence". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
10. "NYU Stern | News | A. Michael Spence, Nobel Economist, to Join NYU Stern". www.stern.nyu.edu. February 22, 2010. Retrieved June 14, 2016.
11. "Nobel Economist Michael Spence Joins SDA Bocconi Faculty". BusinessBecause. July 25, 2011. Retrieved June 18, 2016.
12. "Nobel laureate A. Michael Spence named Hoover Senior Fellow". Hoover Institution. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
13. "OurInternet". www.ourinternet.org. Retrieved June 14, 2016.
14. "Berggruen Institute". Archived from the original on 2018-06-13. Retrieved 2017-01-07.
15. Forbes, Miguel. "Charles Taylor Wins $1M First Inaugural Berggruen Nobel Prize", Forbes, January 3, 2017.
16. Philips, Matthew (March 28, 2011). "Should High-Frequency Trading Be Banned? One Nobel Winner Thinks So". Freakanomics blog.
17. "The $100 Billion Friendship In a frank chat with FORTUNE's Brent Schlender, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer talk about their partnership and how it will shape Microsoft in the 21st century". archive.fortune.com. October 25, 1999. Retrieved June 14, 2016.
18. "People at Magdalen - Magdalen College Oxford (Search by last name)". www.magd.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved June 14, 2016.
19. "A. Michael Spence - Biography". stern.nyu.edu. Retrieved April 7, 2019.
20. "Fellows of the Econometric Society 1950 to 2019 | The Econometric Society". www.econometricsociety.org. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
21. "Andrew Michael Spence". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2020-05-12.

External links

• Michael Spence Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University
• Michael Spence on Nobelprize.org including the Prize Lecture December 8, 2001 Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets
• Michael Spence (1943– ). The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.). Liberty Fund. 2008.
• Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc
• Archive of Michael Spence articles on Project Syndicate