Stanford GSB: Stanford Business August 2000

Stanford Business

August 2000, Volume 68, Number 4

Edward Lazear

Edward Lazear (above) and Paul Romer (right) are the newest of the School's faculty to be elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Photographs by Saul Bromberger/Sandra Hoover, Anne Knudsen

Lazear and Romer Elected to Academy
TWO BUSINESS SCHOOL economists, Edward Lazear and Paul Romer, were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on April 15. They were among 154 new members six from Stanford selected by the prestigious organization in recognition of their distinguished intellectual contributions in a wide variety of fields. Lazear is considered to be the founder of personnel economics and has written the two major books on the subject, Personnel Economics and Personnel Economics for Managers. Lazear, the Jack Steele Parker Professor of Human Resources Management and Economics, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and was honored by Business School students in 1994 for his exemplary teaching. He is also this year's recipient of the PhD Faculty Distinguished Service Award.

Romer, the Stanco 25 Professor of Economics, is nationally recognized for his study of economic growth, economic development, and science and technology policy. He is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and serves as codirector of the Center for Research on Employment and Economic Growth at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where he is also a senior fellow. Romer is the recipient of the 1999 Distinguished Teaching Award at the Business School.

Lazear and Romer bring the total of academy members from the Business School to 13. The academy, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., has a membership of 3,600 fellows who are citizens or residents of the United States, as well as 600 foreign honorary members. Induction ceremonies are scheduled for October 14.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR of Organizational Behavior Michael Morris was awarded tenure, effective May 1. Morris, who studies cultural influences on social cognition; interpersonal and intergroup conflict resolution; and processes of perception, judgment, and decision making, is the recipient of several scholarly honors, including the 1999 Ascendant Scholar Award from the Western Academy of Management.

Two other faculty members, Mary Barth, professor of accounting, and Seungjin Whang, professor of operations, information, and technology, have been promoted to full professor, effective September 1.

FACULTY MEMBERS David Kreps and Joel Podolny move to the deans' office September 1 to serve as senior associate deans for academic affairs. They join George Parker, who will continue in his role as senior associate dean and director of the MBA Program.

Kreps, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Economics, joined the faculty in 1975. In the past decade, Kreps has been instrumental in developing the School's interdisciplinary human resource management area, and he recently coauthored the book Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers with colleague James Baron. Kreps and Baron, who is the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources, also worked together to create the MBA core course in human resources introduced in 1993.

Kreps is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is the 1989 winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and was honored with the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991.

At Stanford since 1991, Podolny codirects the School's Executive Program in Strategy and Organization. In 1999-2000, he served as faculty director of the Global Management Program and was cocreator of the MBA core course Managing in the Global Economy, which he taught spring quarter. Podolny will become the William R. Timken Professor of Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management on September 1.

Kreps and Podolny succeed David Brady, the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values, and Margaret Neale, the John G. McCoy-Banc One Corporation Professor of Organizations and Dispute Resolution, who have served in the deans' office since 1997 and will now return to teaching.

TO WHAT EXTENT is violent entertainment being marketed to American youth? Assistant Professor of Marketing Sonya Grier is part of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) team charged by President Clinton to investigate marketing practices in the film, recording, and computer game industries.

The yearlong study, which was ordered by the president after the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, is sponsored jointly by the Commission and the Department of Justice. The team, consisting of Grier, nine FTC lawyers, and an economist, plans to release its report to the president and Congress sometime late summer.