Edward Glaeser

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Edward Glaeser bigraphy, stories - Economists

Edward Glaeser : biography

May 1, 1967 –

Edward Ludwig "Ed" Glaeser (born May 1, 1967) is an American economist and Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He was educated at The Collegiate School in New York City before obtaining his B.A. in economics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. Glaeser joined the faculty of Harvard in 1992, where he is currently (as of April 2012) the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor at the Department of Economics, the Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and the Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston (both at the Kennedy School of Government). He was also an editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Glaeser’s connections with both Chicago and Harvard make him a linkage between the Chicago School and the Cambridge School of Economics. Glaeser and John A. List were mentioned as reasons why the AEA committee began to award the Clark Medal annually in 2009.

According to a review in the New York Times, his book entitled Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (2011)

summarizes Glaeser's years of research into the role that cities play in fostering human achievement and "is at once polymathic and vibrant". 

Writings

Glaeser has published at a rate of almost five articles per year since 1992 in leading peer-reviewed academic economics journals, in addition to many books, other articles, blogs, and op-eds. Glaeser has made substantial contributions to the empirical study of urban economics. In particular, his work examining the historical evolution of economic hubs like Boston and New York City has had major influence on both economics and urban geography. Glaeser also has written on a variety of other topics, ranging from social economics to the economics of religion, from both contemporary and historical perspectives.

His work has earned the admiration of a number of prominent economists. George Akerlof (2001 Economics Nobel Prize) praised Glaeser as a "genius", and Gary Becker (1992 Economics Nobel Prize) commented that before Glaeser "urban economics was dried up. No one had come up with some new ways to look at cities."

Despite the seeming disparateness of the topics he has examined, most of Glaeser’s work can be said to apply economic theory (and especially price theory and game theory) to explain human economic and social behavior. Glaeser develops models using these tools and then evaluates them with real world data, so as to verify their applicability. A number of his papers in applied economics are co-written with his Harvard colleague, Andrei Shleifer.

In 2006, Glaeser began writing a regular column for the New York Sun. He writes a monthly column for the Boston Globe. He blogs frequently for the New York Times at Economix, and he has written essays for The New Republic.

Although his most recent book entitled Triumph of the City(2011) celebrates the city, he moved with his wife and children to the suburbs in c. 2006 because of "home interest deduction, highway infrastructure and local school systems".

He explained that this move is further "evidence of how public policy stacks the deck against cities. [B]ecause of all the good that comes out of city life — both personal and municipal — people should take a hard look at the policies that are driving residents into the suburbs. 

Family background and influence

Glaeser was born in Manhattan, New York to Ludwig Glaeser (Born: 1930; Died: September 27, 2006) and Elizabeth Glaeser., The New York Times, September 27, 2007 His father was born in Berlin in 1930, lived in Berlin during World War II and moved to West Berlin in the 1950s. Ludwig Glaeser received a degree in architecture from the Darmstadt University of Technology and a Ph.D. in art history from the Free University of Berlin before joining the staff at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1963. He would go to be curator of the Department of Architecture and Design in 1969., Press Release, January 15, 1969