Michael Rothschild (born August 2, 1942, in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, United States) is an American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

; he is

visiting professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...

at the Department of

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and a former dean at Princeton.

Education

Rothschild holds a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

from Reed College (1963), and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

in international relations from

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 ...

(1965). He earned his

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 from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(1969).

Honors

Rothschild has achieved a plethora or recognition through his time in academia and beyond. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the Econometric Society.

Academic career

He was the

William Stuart Tod William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...

Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus at the

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...

. He was dean of the

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 ...

from 1995 through 2001. Rothschild has written on asymmetric information, decision-making under uncertainty, demography, investment, taxation, finance, and jury-decision processes. He co-authored one of the most important papers in economics, ''Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information,'' with

Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...

. This paper gives the first systematic exposition of the problem of cherry picking when insurance companies compete for customers. In ''Increasing Risk I: A definition'', Rothschild and Stiglitz introduced the important decision theory concept of the

mean-preserving spread In probability and statistics, a mean-preserving spread (MPS) is a change from one probability distribution A to another probability distribution B, where B is formed by spreading out one or more portions of A's probability density function or proba ...

, which leads to a partial ordering of probability distributions according to degree of risk. Not only has he written on insurance, but also asymmetric information, demography, investment, taxation, finance among others. In addition, he coedited Studies of Supply and Demand in Higher Education. It highlights the presence of competition, use of resources, decision-making in education regarding higher education. Most notably he wrote about decision-making under uncertainty through, 'Uncertainty in Economics: Readings and Exercises,'' with Peter Diamond. This book synthesizes the traditional and modern thought associated with economic uncertainty. It provides understanding into three primary groups: theory of choice under uncertainty, general equilibrium models of financial institutions, and models of the effects of uncertainty on market institutions.

References

External links

Official homepage at UCLACV

Website at Princeton
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothschild, Michael 1942 births Living people 21st-century American economists Reed College alumni Yale University alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Princeton University faculty Fellows of the Econometric Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Fellows of the American Economic Association