Hello-
I'm writing to bring to your attention a new addition to the set of job options
available for economists, ranging from summer internships for students
to permanent positions, post-docs, and sabatticals. Recently both
Yahoo! and Microsoft Research (MSR) have committed themselves to
developing economics groups. Yahoo!'s efforts have been going on for
a couple of years and their full-time group now includes Preston
McAfee and Michael Schwarz, and they
have hosted visitors including David Reiley this year. See:
http://research.yahoo.com/Econ_and_Social_Sys
Microsoft currently has a number of scholars active at the interface
of computer
science and economics, and is set to do a big push of hiring in the mainstream
of economics for next year. I've been doing some work with MSR
through some recent research I have been doing, so I wanted to pass
on details of those opportunities.
MSR is currently taking a multi-pronged approach to entering the
economics market: junior faculty positions, sabbatical visitors, and
postdocs, with the goal to bring in at least four people next year
through some combination of those channels. They will consider
coordinated sabbaticals and are generally open-minded and creative
about how to achieve the goal of building a high-quality group.
MSR is sort of like an updated and improved version of Bell Labs --
it promotes academic excellence and rewards publishing first and
foremost, and it does not require review for the release of research
papers. In computer science and some areas of mathematics, MSR is
considered to be a top job; they compete with the very best
schools. Microsoft Research maintains ties to academics in other
ways as well, including giving grants, sponsoring sabbaticals, and
"consulting" agreements where people devote a certain number of hours
a week to doing research collaboratively with researchers at MSR.
MSR will be looking to meet the high standards they have set in other fields,
and they have committed the resources to do it. A job at MSR
entails no teaching, limited administrative responsibilities,
and a competitive salary. Of course there are lots of very
interesting data sources pertaining to their hardware and software
products as well as their search and online advertising business.
MSR is especially interested in people who have an interest in topics
related to Microsoft's products, services, and data sets or would
otherwise be a good fit with the research interests of MSR.
Here is a link to the JOE ad:
http://www.aeaweb.org/joe/current/joe_full_adv.php?adnum=20071215101&position=1337&employer=1338&issue=200712
Feel free to pass this information on to interested faculty and students.
***************************************************************
Professor Susan Athey
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center
1875 Cambridge St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
athey_at_fas.harvard.edu
http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~athey/
***************************************************************
Received on Thu Dec 13 2007 - 14:50:30 EST
