Preston McAfee
Randolph Preston McAfee | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 7, 1956 United States |
| Occupation(s) | Economist, scientist, academic |
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Known for | McAfee mechanism, auction theory, microeconomics research |
Randolph Preston McAfee (born July 7, 1956) is an American economist and renowned scientist currently affiliated with Google. Previously, he held the position of chief economist at Microsoft and was vice president and research fellow at Yahoo! Research, where he led the Microeconomics and Social Systems division. McAfee also served as the J. Stanley Johnson Professor of Business, Economics, and Management at the California Institute of Technology, overseeing social sciences and instructing courses in business strategy, managerial economics, and microeconomics.
Education and employment
McAfee completed his undergraduate degree in economics at the University of Florida in 1976. He then earned master's degrees in both economics and mathematics in 1978, followed by a PhD in economics from Purdue University in 1980. His academic career includes faculty appointments at the University of Western Ontario (1981–1990), the University of Texas (1990–2003), and Caltech (2003–2009), along with visiting roles at MIT and the business school of the University of Chicago.
In 2007, McAfee joined Yahoo! Research as a vice president and research fellow, where he established a social science group dedicated to projects with both scientific significance and commercial impact, also serving as chief economist. He transitioned to Google in 2012 to lead research in microeconomics that integrates business strategy, social science, and computer science. In 2014, he became chief economist at Microsoft, a role he held until February 2018.
Research
McAfee has authored more than one hundred academic papers extensively cited in microeconomics and industrial organization. His research areas include auctions, bundling, price discrimination, antitrust policy, contracting, and mechanism design. Lately, his investigations have merged microeconomics with computer science. In recognition of his contributions to auction theory, he received the Golden Goose Award in 2014. He is particularly known for developing the McAfee mechanism used in double auction settings.
Professional activities
An advocate for open access to academic publications and educational materials, McAfee co-maintains an online resource with Ted Bergstrom that monitors journal subscription costs for university libraries. He authored an open access economics textbook titled Introduction to Economic Analysis and has been recognized as a SPARC Innovator by the Association of Research Libraries.
He co-founded and serves as co-editor for the ACM journal Transactions of Economics and Computation, which publishes research at the convergence of computer science and economics.
During his tenure as editor of Economic Inquiry from 2007 to 2012, McAfee introduced a "no revisions" policy aimed at speeding up the publication process. He also co-edited the American Economic Review between 1993 and 2002 and holds fellowship status with the Econometric Society.
Known for infusing humor into economic discourse, McAfee authored the well-known article "American Economic Growth and the Voyage of Columbus" (American Economic Review, 1983), which offers a satirical examination of economic history writing. While editing Economic Inquiry, he created a humor section named "Miscellany."
He is also the author of Competitive Solutions: The Strategist's Toolkit, a textbook on business strategy that provides managers with microeconomic frameworks for strategic decision-making.
Consulting
McAfee has provided advisory services to the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division as well as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), offering guidance on issues such as mergers, collusion, price manipulation, electricity market pricing, bidding processes, procurement strategies, and the sale of government assets. Between 1994 and 1995, he contributed his expertise to the USA Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concerning the design of spectrum auctions for personal communications services. His consultancy work for the FTC included analyzing the mergers involving Exxon and Mobil, along with British Petroleum and ARCO. Additionally, McAfee acted as an expert witness in cases like FTC v. Rambus and provided analysis on competitive implications during the proposed merger of PeopleSoft and Oracle in USA v. Oracle Corporation.
References
- Yahoo Hires Economics, Sociology Researchers, CNet, 10 May 2007.
- Yahoo! Research Expands Team into Social Sciences, BillHartzer.com, 10 May 2007.
- SPARC Innovator: R. Preston McAfee, Association of Research Libraries, January 2009.
- Google antitrust? Ask the one man who can (almost) answer, Cade Metz, The Register, 30 November 2010.
External links
- Preston McAfee's web site
- R. Preston McAfee's Curriculum Vitae
- Preston McAfee's publications and citations on Google Scholar
- "Introduction to Economic Analysis", by R. Preston McAfee
- Economic Growth and the Voyage of Columbus, by R. Preston McAfee, American Economic Review, September 1983.
- Edifying Editing, by R. Preston McAfee, The American Economist, Spring 2010.
- Pages with script errors
- Articles with short description
- Articles with hCards
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- 1956 births
- 21st-century American economists
- California Institute of Technology faculty
- Living people
- Purdue University alumni
- Krannert School of Management alumni
- University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences alumni
- Yahoo! employees
- Google employees
- Fellows of the Econometric Society