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"Besides the first degree of eminence in science, a professor with us must be of sober and correct morals and habit." Thomas Jefferson

Vita

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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.

 

Contact

contact

e-mail: david@dklevine.com; http://www.dklevine.com

At RHUL

administrative assistant:
Magdalena Redzig
Magdalena.Redzik@rhul.ac.uk

mail:

David Levine
Department of Economics
Royal Holloway University of London
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
United Kingdom
 
Room: Horton 306

At Wash U

administrative assistant:
Jessica Cain
+1 314-935-4842
jcain@wustl.edu
Seigle Hall 315A

mail:

David Levine
Department of Economics
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1208
St. Louis MO 63130-4899 USA

Appointments are best arranged by email at david@dklevine.com.