Matthew Rabin

Matthew Rabin integrates psychology and economics to offer new perspectives on such phenomena as group behavior and addiction. Rabin has demonstrated particular strength in distilling from psychological research those insights that can be modeled mathematically. His recent work develops economic models that incorporate important aspects of the psychology of choice behavior in such phenomena as procrastination, addiction, and saving for retirement. The enhanced realism of the resulting mathematical models also provides more potent tools for developing public policy. He is at work on a book intended to serve as an economist's guide to psychology. Matthew Rabin is the Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Harvard Economics Department and Harvard Business School. Rabin was the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and Harvard University. His articles have appeared in many peer-reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Theory, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Rabin earned a B.A. (1984) from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. (1989) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.