Edward Lazear
| Edward Paul Lazear | |
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| 24th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers | |
| In office 2006–2009 |
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| President | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Ben Bernanke |
| Succeeded by | Christina Romer |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1948 |
| Alma mater | University of California, Los Angeles Harvard University |
Edward Paul "Ed" Lazear (born 1948) is an award-winning American economist, considered the founder of personnel economics, and was the chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush.
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[edit] Career
Lazear graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a bachelor's degree and master's degree in economics in 1971. He received his doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1974.
From 1985 to 1992, he was a professor of Urban and Labor Economics at the University of Chicago. Since 1992, he has been an economics professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Lazear has served as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as well as a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Institute for the Study of Labor. He is a Morris Arnold Cox Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 1996, he founded the Society of Labor Economists. Prior to his nomination and confirmation as chief economic advisor to the President, Lazear was a member of Bush's tax reform advisory panel in 2005.
[edit] Research
Lazear is the founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics. He has published over 100 scholarly articles,[1]
Most of his work has to do with motivating and compensating workers. One of his most famous papers, "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," argues that in certain circumstances, it is in a firm's best interest to rank its employees and pay particularly high wages to the top-ranked employees. This helps explain why the highest jobs, like chief executive officer, often draw paychecks that are much higher than the next-highest jobs, even though the skill differences between those employees are not very high. It also helps explain the partnership structure of law firms, in which associate lawyers compete to become partners and earn a much higher salary. He has also analyzed how peer pressure and mandatory retirement can help reduce principal–agent problems in companies.
[edit] Patents
Edward Lazear is listed as a coinventor on 5 pending US patent applications.[1] Some of these pending patent applications are considered to be tax patents.[2] This has led to criticism of Lazear by organizations opposed to tax patents, such as Citizens for Tax Justice. Lazear, however, no longer has any ownership rights in these pending applications and cannot receive any royalties from them should they ever issue as valid patents. The full ownership rights to these applications are owned by Liquid Engines.
[edit] Awards
Lazear has won a number of awards over his career. Among those that he has won are:
- 1998 Leo Melamed Biennial Prize.
- 2003 Adam Smith Prize, European Association of Labor Economists.
- 2004 IZA Prize in Labor Economics, Institute for the Study of Labor.
[edit] Publications
- Books
- Lazear, Edward P. (1995). Personnel Economics. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12188-3. Chapter-preview links.
- Edward Lazear, ed (1996). Culture Wars in America. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-5762-6.
- Lazear, Edward (1995). Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia: Realities of Reform. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-9332-0.
- Lazear, Edward (2002). Education in the Twenty-first Century. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-2892-8.
- Lazear, Edward and Michael Gibbs (2009). Personnel Economics in Practice. 4th ed.,Wiley. ISBN 0-471-67592-1. Description and preview.
- Lazear, Edward et al., ed. (2004). Personnel Economics, Elgar, with 43 articles dating from 1962 to 2000 (link to contents link here).
- Articles
- Lazear, Edward P. (1979). "Why Is There Mandatory Retirement?" Journal of Political Economy, 87(6), pp. 1261-1284.
- Lazear, Edward P., and Sherwin Rosen (1981). "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, 89(5), pp. 841-864.
- Lazear, Edward P. (1986). "Salaries and Piece Rates," Journal of Business, 59(3), pp. 405-431.
- _____ (1999). "Personnel Economics: Past Lessons and Future Directions," Journal of Labor Economics, 17(2), p. 233 [pp. 199-236]. (Presidential address to the Society of Labor Economists.)
- _____ (2000a). "Economic Imperialism," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(1), pp. 99-146.
- _____ (2000b). "The Future of Personnel Economics," Economic Journal, 110(467), pp. F611-F639.</ref>
- _____ (2000c). "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, 90(5), pp. 1346-1361.
- Lazear, Edward P., and Kathryn L. Shaw (2007). "Personnel Economics: The Economist's View of Human Resources," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(4), pp. 91-114.
- Lazear, Edward, 2008. "personnel economics," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition, v. 6, pp. 380-84]. Abstract.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Pending US patent applications listing Edward Lazear as a coinventor and their corresponding international counterparts
- ^ Stamper, Dustin "Bush Economist Listed as Inventor on Tax Strategy Patent Application", Tax Notes, September 17, 2001
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
- Edward Lazear's personal homepage.
- Lazear's Hoover Institute bio.
| Government offices | ||
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| Preceded by Ben Bernanke |
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers 2006-2009 |
Succeeded by Christina Romer |
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