|
David K. Levine is Leverhulme International Professor of
Economics at Royal Holloway University of London. He is also John
H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at
Washington University in St. Louis. He is a fellow of the Econometric
Society, an Economic Theory Fellow and a research associate
of the CEPR. 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 the Advancement of Economic Theory and 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, as a research associate of the
NBER, and as panelist for the National
Science Foundation. He has worked as research consultant for
the Federal Reserve
Bank of Minneapolis, and the
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, helped found NAJ
Economics and Theoretical Economics,
and was founding co-director of the CASSEL
and MISSEL experimental laboratories. His scientific research has
been supported by grants from the National
Science Foundation and is currently supported by the Leverhulme
Trust.
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. He and his associates currently operate the blog Against
Monopoly documenting many of the current problems and issues
in intellectual monopoly.
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.
Recently Levine has worked with Salvatore Modica, Andrea Mattozzi
and others using models of social norms to study political
institutions, evolutionary models of the state, and the formation
and organization of interest groups. His current research extends
this program to the study of the development of social norms in
the laboratory and the development of artificially intelligent
agents that mimic human behavior.
|
