Donald John Roberts (born February 11, 1945) is a Canadian-American economist, and John H. and Irene S. Scully Professor of Economics, Strategic Management and International Business at the

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...

Biography

Born in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

, Manitoba, Roberts received his bachelor's degree from the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

in 1972. In 2007 he received a Doctor of Laws degree (honoris causa) from the

University of Winnipeg The University of Winnipeg (UWinnipeg, UW) is a public research university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, that offers undergraduate faculties of art, business and economics, education, science and kinesiology and applied health as well as gr ...

. After graduation he taught at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

from 1971 until coming to Stanford in 1980. From 1980 until 2001 he held the Jonathan B. Lovelace Professorship at the school. He was a senior associate dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in charge of external relations and executive education from 2000 to 2008. and He also is a professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Economics at Stanford, and he directs the Global Management Program and the Center for Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was the doctoral thesis advisor for several well known economists, notably John Bates Clark Medal winner

Susan Athey Susan Carleton Athey (born ) is an American economist. She is the Economics of Technology Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining Stanford, she has been a professor at Harva ...

. Roberts is a fellow and former council member of the

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

, and fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

He has served on the editorial boards of multiple economics journals. In 2002, Roberts received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Stanford Graduate School of Business' Sloan Master's Program. In 2004,

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...

named his book ''The Modern Firm'' the year's best business book, and in 2005 he received the school's Robert T. Davis Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award.

Work

Roberts' research focuses on the design, governance and management of organizations, especially in an international context. He also has published extensively on industrial competition and the influence of differences in information among parties on strategic behavior.

Games of incomplete information in economic modeling

With

Paul Milgrom Paul Robert Milgrom (born April 20, 1948) is an American economist. He is the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, a position he has held since 1987. He is a ...

he was instrumental in introducing the use of games of incomplete information into economic modeling and also with bringing the methods of lattice programming into the study of

monotone comparative statics Monotone comparative statics is a sub-field of comparative statics that focuses on the conditions under which endogenous variables undergo monotone changes (that is, either increasing or decreasing) when there is a change in the exogenous paramete ...

in economic analysis. Most recently, he has been involved in two path-breaking controlled experiments in large firms examining the effects of changing management practices. One study involves Indian cotton weaving firms. The other involves a large Chinese service company.

Selected publications

Roberts is the author of more than 70 scholarly articles and co-author of the first textbook on the economics of organization and management. * Roberts, John. ''The modern firm: Organizational design for performance and growth.'' Oxford University Press, 2004. ;Articles, a selection * Roberts, Donald John.
Existence of Lindahl equilibrium with a measure space of consumers
" ''Journal of Economic Theory'' 6.4 (1973): 355-381. * Champsaur, Paul, Donald John Roberts, and Robert W. Rosenthal.
On cores in economies with public goods
" ''International Economic Review'' (1975): 751-764. * Roberts, Donald John, and Andrew Postlewaite.
The incentives for price-taking behavior in large exchange economies
" ''Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society'' (1976): 115-127. * Roberts, Donald John. "The Lindahl solution for economies with public goods." ''Journal of Public Economics'' 3.1 (1974): 23-42. * Gary Mekikian and Roberts, Donald John. (2009)
Note on IT Services Industry
Economics,'' Stanford Graduate School of Business.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, Donald John 1945 births Living people Mathematical economists Public economists Canadian operations researchers Experimental economists University of Manitoba alumni University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni Stanford University Graduate School of Business faculty Northwestern University faculty People from Winnipeg Canadian emigrants to the United States Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Econometric Society