Marina Halac appointed the Stanley Resor (B.A. 1901) Professor of Economics
Marina Halac, an expert in game theory, contract theory, and mechanism design, has been appointed the Stanley Resor (B.A. 1901) Professor of Economics, effective immediately.
She is a member of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), in the Department of Economics.
Halac joined the Yale faculty in 2018, after holding faculty positions at Columbia Business School and the University of Warwick. A graduate of the Universidad del CEMA, Argentina, she earned her Ph.D. in economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Halac’s research focuses on understanding how incentives are shaped by contracting constraints and the information environment. She has developed dynamic contracts models to study issues such as the structure and breakdown of employment relationships, the problem of how to motivate experimentation and innovation, and the role of reputation in maintaining productivity. She has extensive work on delegation, with an emphasis on how to design fiscal and monetary policy rules in the presence of political biases. Most recently, she has studied the effects of externalities in multi-agent contracting settings, shedding light on the drivers of price dispersion and pay discrimination. While motivated by applied questions, Halac’s research often involves the formulation of theoretical models with conceptual or methodological innovations.
Halac’s publications include influential articles in top journals in the field, including Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and others.
For this work, Halac has received numerous awards and honors. She is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and the Academia Nacional de Ciencias Económicas, Argentina. She was the 2016 recipient of the Elaine Bennett Research Prize, awarded biennially by the American Economic Association to recognize outstanding work by women in the field of economics.
Halac has also been recognized for her teaching. She was named one of the “World’s Best 40 Under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets&Quants for her MBA teaching at Columbia Business School. At Yale, she offers courses in game theory and contract theory, and she has received the Merton J. Peck Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
Halac’s service to her field and to Yale is considerable. She is currently co-editor of Econometrica, previously co-edited Theoretical Economics, and served on editorial boards for other major journals. She has co-organized a number of conferences on economic theory, and served on several committees for Yale, the American Economic Association, and the Econometric Society. At Yale, Halac also served as director of the Cowles Foundation from 2020 to 2023.
