Stephen Edward Morris is an

economic theorist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the 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 field there are ...

and

game theorist Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...

especially known for his research in the field of

global games In economics and game theory, global games are games of incomplete information where players receive possibly-correlated signals of the underlying state of the world. Global games were originally defined by Carlsson and van Damme (1993). The mo ...

. Since July 2019, he has been a Professor of Economics at 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 ...

. Prior to that he taught at

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

Yale 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 wor ...

, and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. He was the editor of

Econometrica ''Econometrica'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles in many areas of economics, especially econometrics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Econometric Society. The current editor-in-chief is Gui ...

for the period 2007–2011, and in 2019 served as president 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. ...

Biography

Stephen Morris was born in 1963 in a small town called Weybridge in England. Morris's father was the senior UK diplomat Sir Willie Morris, who served as the UK's Ambassador to several countries. His mother was Ghislaine Morris. Morris obtained a

B.A. 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 yea ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

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 ...

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in 1985. He worked as an economist for the government of Uganda for two years before choosing to continue his formal education 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 ...

, and earned a

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

in economics in 1991. He became an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and general ...

in 1991 and an associate professor in 1996. In 1998 he moved to Yale as a full professor. In 2005 he became the

Irving Fisher Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt def ...

Professor of Economics at Yale. He moved to Princeton University in 2005, where he became the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics in 2007. Since 2019, he is the Peter A. Diamond Professor in Economics of Economics at the

. Morris is the founding editor of the

BEPress Bepress is a commercial, academic software firm owned by RELX Group. It began in 1999 as the Berkeley Electronic Press, co-founded by academics Robert Cooter and Aaron Edlin. It makes products and services to support scholarly communication, ...

Journals of Theoretical Economics and the editor of Econometrica for the period 2007–2011. Morris is a Fellow of the

since 2002 and was elected a member 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 ...

in 2005. He held the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for 2005–2006 year and was the President of the Econometric Society in 2019. In 2021, he was elected member of the U. S.

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

Research contribution

Global coordination games belong to a subfield of

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...

which gained momentum with the article by Morris and Shin (1998). Stephen Morris and

Hyun Song Shin Hyun Song Shin () is a South Korean economic theorist and financial economist who focuses on global games. He has been the Economic Adviser and Head of Research of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) since May 1, 2014. Previously, he ...

considered a stylized currency crises model, in which traders observe the relevant fundamentals with small noise, and show that this leads to the selection of a unique equilibrium. This result is in stark contrast with models of

complete information In economics and game theory, complete information is an economic situation or game in which knowledge about other market participants or players is available to all participants. The utility functions (including risk aversion), payoffs, strategies ...

, which feature multiple equilibria. Morris has also made important contributions to the theory of

mechanism design Mechanism design is a field in economics and game theory that takes an objectives-first approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts a ...

. In his work with Dirk Bergemann on robust mechanism design, they relaxed common knowledge assumptions which were prevalent in the early mechanism design literature. By formulating the mechanism design problem more precisely, they showed that simple mechanisms arise endogenously. This provided a theoretical justification for the relatively simple auction design employed in practice when compared to the complexity of optimal auctions suggested by the early literature. His two most recent contributions to the field of Economics are papers titled: 'Search, Information, and Prices' and 'Information, Market Power and Price Volatility,' published in the Journal of Political Economy and the RAND Journal of Economics respectively. Both of these papers were published in 2021.

References

Sources

* Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin (1998), "Unique Equilibrium in a Model of Self-Fulfilling Currency Attacks," ''

American Economic Review The ''American Economic Review'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Economic Association. First published in 1911, it is considered one of the most prestigious and highly distinguished journals in the field of ec ...

'', 88 (3): 587–97. * Dirk Bergemann and Stephen Morris (2005), "Robust Mechanism Design," ''

'', 73 (6): 1771–1813 * MIT Economics (2021), "People: Stephen Morris"

External links

Webpage at Princeton

Curriculum Vitae
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Stephen New classical economists Game theorists 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Alumni of the University of Cambridge University of Pennsylvania faculty Yale University faculty Princeton University faculty Fellows of the Econometric Society Presidents of the Econometric Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Living people Economics journal editors Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture speakers 1963 births