Eric Glen Weyl (born May 6, 1985) is an economist and a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and author of the book ''Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society'' with co-author

Eric Posner Eric Andrew Posner (; born December 5, 1965) is an American lawyer and legal scholar who has served as a counsel for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division since 2022. As a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Posner has ...

. Weyl is co-creator of

quadratic voting Quadratic voting is a collective decision-making procedure which involves individuals allocating votes to express the ''degree'' of their preferences, rather than just the ''direction'' of their preferences. By doing so, quadratic voting seeks ...

, a collective

decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...

procedure designed to allow fine-grained expression of how strongly voters feel about an issue, and

quadratic funding Quadratic voting is a collective decision-making procedure which involves individuals allocating Voting, votes to express the ''degree'' of their preferences, rather than just the ''direction'' of their preferences. By doing so, quadratic voting ...

, a method of democratically disbursing resources.

Early life and education

Weyl was born in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and grew up in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

. He is

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. Growing up, his family favored the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

. As a youth Weyl also embraced

free market In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any o ...

beliefs after being introduced to the works of

Ayn Rand Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;, . Most sources transliterate her given name as either ''Alisa'' or ''Alissa''. , 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and p ...

and

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...

. Weyl graduated

Choate Rosemary Hall Choate Rosemary Hall (often known as Choate; ) is a private, co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. Choate is currently ranked as the second best boarding school and third best private high ...

preparatory high school in 2003, where he won the

Douglass North Douglass Cecil North (November 5, 1920 – November 23, 2015) was an American economist known for his work in economic history. He was the co-recipient (with Robert William Fogel) of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. In the wor ...

award for economics and the William Gardner and Mary Atwater Choate Award for outstanding male scholar. He went on to attend

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where four years later, he had completed all his coursework and exams for a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

in Economics, as well as being selected as class of 2007

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution. The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA ...

Career

After his PhD, Weyl spent three years as a Junior Fellow at the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

and another three years as an assistant professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

before joining

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

as an economist and researcher. He also teaches a course at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, "Designing the Digital Economy," that blends economics and computer science in much the way that digital economists blend them at tech companies.

Selected bibliography

* ''Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society'' (

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

, May 15, 2018, ), written with

Articles

* "A price theory of multi-sided platforms", ''American Economic Review'' (2010) * "Pass-through as an economic tool: Principles of incidence under imperfect competition", ''Journal of Political Economy'' (2013, with M Fabinger) * "A proposal to limit the anti-competitive power of institutional investors", ''Antitrust Law Journal'' (2017, with FM Scott Morton) *
Should We Treat Data as Labor? Moving beyond 'Free'
, American Economic Association / aeaweb.org (2018, with Imanol Arrieta-Ibarra, Leonard Goff, Diego Jiménez-Hernández, and Jaron Lanier)

Personal life

Weyl married Alisha Caroline Holland in 2010. They met in 2003 during their first year at Princeton. , Holland worked at Princeton as an Associate Professor of Politics.

References

External links

Interview with Glen Weyl by FiveBooks, "about , how his thinking has evolved, and what's happened to their ideas in the real world since the book was published in May, 2018
Accessed 24 August 2020. {{DEFAULTSORT:Weyl, Glen 1985 births Living people Microsoft employees Writers from San Francisco Writers from Palo Alto, California Economists from California Choate Rosemary Hall alumni Princeton University alumni Voting theorists Yale University faculty American male non-fiction writers American economics writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American economists