E. Glen Weyl
Economist, Microsoft Research
E. (Eric) Glen Weyl left academia in September 2019 to focus his work with public engagement around the future of technology and society. He took on a new role at Microsoft Research as the Office of the Chief Technology Officer Political Economist and Social Technologist (OCTOPEST).
Dr. Weyl's primary intellectual interests are in pure and applied price theory, with a focus on industrial organization, as well as the intersection between economics and other disciplines, particularly history, philosophy and evolutionary biology. His research addresses topics ranging from the career choices of talented students to the design of institutions for property takings (eminent domain).
He has written on demand theory, as well as political philosophy, the evolution of cooperation and the economics of multi-sided platforms. His first book, Jewish Economies: Development and Migration in America and Beyond (a collection of Simon Kuznets's essays edited jointly with Stephanie Lo), was published in two volumes by Transaction Publishers.
Dr. Weyl has been an academic visitor at universities and ministries in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, as well as a research intern at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division.
Degrees
Ph.D. Economics, Princeton University, 2008
M.A. Economics, Princeton University, 2008
A.B. Economics, Princeton University, 2007
Recent Academic Article Summaries
The First-Order Approach to Merger Analysis
This technical paper presents a new method for predicting the effects of a merger between two firms.
Antitrust regulators may use the method presented in this paper to analyze a wider variety of mergers than previous methods permitted.
Market Power Screens Willingness-to-Pay
This paper proposes a new method for rewarding innovation by firms.
The problems resulting from rewarding innovation with prizes or with patents can be ameliorated by using a hybrid reward system.
Insulated Platform Competition
This paper presents a flexible, general model for competition in markets featuring multi-sided platforms.
Regulators can use this model to better understand pricing strategies of firms competing in markets with two-sided platforms.
Materialistic Genius and Market Power: Uncovering the Best Innovations
This paper considers how to best use prizes and intellectual property rights to reward innovation.
Rewarding inventors with a mix of monetary prizes and intellectual property rights often works best. Prizes are more useful when inventions have low and well-known values, and when it is easy to get inventors to work.
Price Theory of Multi-Sided Platforms, A
This paper looks at how competition and prices work for products that serve more than one type of customer.
Competition regulators should be more aggressive in some high-tech markets, holding prices below cost.
Blog Posts
Quotes in the News
Weyl, E. (2018, October 14). Wired.While technology flourished, we “did not allow our social wisdom and social infrastructure to balance that out. I think it's killing equality and structure of our society, so I think we need to regain that spirit of being open to those fundamental social innovations.”
E. Glen Weyl
Economist, Microsoft Research
Weyl, E. (2018, April 12). NPR’s Morning Edition."I want to see companies compete and say to people, look, you shouldn't be taken advantage of. We will pay you a fair price for your data." — Glen Weyl, Professor of Economics, Yale University
E. Glen Weyl
Economist, Microsoft Research
Weyl, E. (2018, January 29). Fast Company.“We need a society that recognizes that [exchange] and gives credit to the people who are actually producing those [systems]. That way, the economic rewards flow to those people so they do the best job they can. We can have a fair income distribution and not have everything concentrated in a few owners of big companies.”
E. Glen Weyl
Economist, Microsoft Research
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