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David K. Levine is John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics
at Washington University in
St. Louis. He is currently serving as President of the
Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, he is a fellow of the
Econometric
Society, an Economic Theory Fellow, a research associate of the
NBER, and of the
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,
managing editor of NAJ
Economics, and co-director of the MISSEL laboratory. His scientific research is supported by
grants from
the National Science
Foundation. He is the author of Is Behavioral Economics Doomed, with Michele Boldrin of Against Intellectual Monopoly, with Drew Fudenberg
of Learning in
Games and
the editor of several conference volumes. He has published extensively
in professional journals, including The American Economic
Review,
Econometrica, The
Review of Economic Studies, The Journal
of Political Economy, The Journal of
Economic Theory, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and The American
Political Science Review.
Professor Levine previously taught at UCLA where he held the Armen
Alchian Chair in Economic Theory and twice served as
Chair of the
Department. He has served as President of the Society for Economic
Dyamics, as co-editor of Econometrica, Economic Theory and the Review
of Economic
Dynamics, as member of the American
Economic Association Honors and Awards Committee, as member
of the Sloan
Research Fellowship
Program Committee and as panelist for the National Science Foundation. He was
program co-chair of the 2002 North American
Summer
Meetings of the Econometric Society, has served on various committees
of the both the Econometric Society and American Economic Association. He has worked as research consultant for the Federal
Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, helped found the journal Theoretical Economics, and was founding
co-director of the CASSEL
and MISSEL experimental laboratories.
Professor Levine's current research interests include the
study of
intellectual property and endogenous growth in dynamic general
equilibrium models, models of self-control, of the endogenous formation of
preferences,
institutions and social norms, learning in games,
evolutionary game theory, virtual economies, and the application
of game theory to experimental economics. At the graduate level, his
teaching focuses on economic dynamics; at the undergraduate
level, he teaches intermediate level microeconomics, focusing largely
on elementary game theory.
Professor Levine received his undergraduate degree in
Mathematics
from UCLA in 1977, and was the recipient of the Daus Prize. At the same
time he received a Master's degree in Economics. His graduate training
was completed with a Ph.D. in Economics at MIT in 1981. His
dissertation examined learning in repeated games. In addition to
teaching at UCLA since 1981, Levine taught at the University of
Minnesota in 1987-88, visited at CalTech in 1990-91 and at the EUI in 2010-2011. He has
presented seminars around the world, and has visited at Cambridge
University, the University of Western Ontario, Carlos III University,
Tel Aviv University, Torcuato Di Tella University, the University of
Texas Austin, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Seoul National
University, the University of Pennsylvania and the EIEF in Rome. He has made
presentations to numerous government connected agencies, including the
International Monetary Fund, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
Canadian Ministry of Industry, the Canadian Ministry of Finance,
the Uruguayan Central Bank and the Bank of Italy, and at private institutions, such as the
Cato Institute.
In the early 1980's Levine worked with Timothy Kehoe on
self-fulfilling prophecies in dynamic general equilibrium models. They
and their collaborators established a series of results, showing that
with a finite number of traders equilibria are, at least locally,
unique. On the other hand, with overlapping generations of consumers,
or other frictions, there can be many equilibria representing different
self-fulfilling prophecies. Later researchers have used these models in
an effort to explain a variety of macroeconomic phenomena.
Subsequently, Kehoe and Levine focused on the issue
of asset
market imperfections. Their research studied the endogenous debt limits
that arise when individual borrowers can default on debt. This leads to
a simple explanation of idiosyncratic risk bearing and low real
interest rates. Recently, the model has been used to explore a variety
of other asset market puzzles.
Levine's recent research in general equilibrium theory
focuses on
growth theory, innovation, and intellectual property. Together with
Michele Boldrin, Levine has studied the role of increasing
returns in growth and innovation. There is little evidence for
increasing returns at the aggregate level, and Boldrin and Levine argue
that there is no reason to believe that increasing returns play an
important role in growth. This theory has important implications as
well for intellectual property, with the conclusion that existing
claims for the necessity of intellectual property in the process of
growth and innovation are greatly overstated.
Over his career, Levine also has worked extensively on dynamic
games. Work
in the mid-80s with Drew Fudenberg established that a long-lived player
playing against short-lived opponents could substitute reputation for
commitment. Together with Eric Maskin, they established the first "folk
theorem" for discounted games in which players do not directly observe each
other's decisions. Subsequently, they turned to the issue of
learning in games, culminating in a book published by MIT
Press. They argued that while it is naive to believe that learning
theories can provide detailed descriptions of non-equilibrium behavior,
they are a useful tool in understanding which equilibria are likely to
emerge. Recently they have applied the theory to examine how
superstitions may survive in the face of rational learning.
In recent years Levine has studied the endogenous formation of
preferences
and social norms. His analysis of experimental anomalies explores some
of the limitations of the standard economic model of self-interested
individuals and is summarized in his book published by Openbook
Publishers. He was among the first to use quantitative theory to study
experimental data, using a model of signalling of intentions to explain
altruism and spite in games such as ultimatum bargaining and centipede.
Most recently, his work on self-control with Fudenberg examines
individual decision
making and shows how internal conflict and commitment may serve to
explain why individuals are vastly more risk averse for small gambles
than for large. Levine's interest in this area has also led him to work
with a computer scientist, Yixin Chen, on developing artificial agents
for use in experimental settings.
Currently Levine is working with Salvatore Modica and
others on political institutions, evolutionary models of the state, and
the formation and organization of interest groups.
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