Prof. Eric Budish
Paul G. McDermott Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship
Centel Foundation/Robert P. Reuss Faculty Scholar
University of Chicago
Booth School of Business
tel: 773.702.8453
cell: 617.721.2654
Eric.Budish@ChicagoBooth.edu
Eric Budish is the Paul G. McDermott Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Co-Director of the Clark Center for Global Markets at Chicago Booth, and Co-Director of the Chicago Booth Economics PhD Program.
Budish is a leading researcher in the academic field of market design. He is best known for his market design inventions for financial exchanges and matching markets, each developed over a series of research papers. In finance, Budish’s research invented a new market design for financial exchanges, frequent batch auctions, to address the arms race for trading speed and its negative effects on market efficiency, liquidity and complexity. Frequent batch auction designs are now being used in stock markets in the US and Europe, with trillions of dollars of cumulative volume, and this research has also had a significant impact on policy, most recently the SEC’s proposal to use auctions for retail investor orders. In matching, Budish’s research invented a new market design using artificial currency, Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes, which is now in use at many universities for matching students to schedules of courses, and to date has cumulatively matched about three hundred thousand student-semesters. This research also developed new criteria of fairness and incentives that have been influential in the literature.
Budish has also conducted influential research on several other market design topics including cryptocurrencies and blockchains, patents and innovation, the market for concert tickets, and aspects of Covid-19 economic policy. Budish’s research on cryptocurrencies and blockchains shows the economic limitations of the core computer science innovation in that area, the anonymous, decentralized trust. Budish’s research on patent design and cancer R&D shows how flawed innovation incentives led to underinvestment in long-term research for cancer prevention. This work received the Kauffman/iHEA Award for Health Care Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research, and the Arrow Award for the best paper in Health Economics. Budish’s research on Covid-19 focused on how to use market design to accelerate global vaccination.
Budish received his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University, his MPhil in Economics from Oxford (Nuffield College), and his BA in Economics and Philosophy from Amherst College. Prior to graduate school, Budish was an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Budish’s honors include giving the 2017 AEA-AFA joint luncheon address, the Sloan Research Fellowship, the AQR Insight Award, and the Marshall Scholarship.