In awarding the medal, the AEA recognized Strack’s highly creative approach to economic theory in his research, which has yielded advances on multiple fronts including economic decision-making and behavioral economics. Strack’s work additionally concerns the formalization of ideas, such as information cost functions and concepts of privacy, and the development of a new analytical approach to mechanism design.
University of Bonn Rector Professor Michael Hoch commented: “On behalf of the University of Bonn, but personally as well, I heartily congratulate our alumnus Philipp Strack on receiving this high-caliber award. The winning of the medal demonstrates that our institution is an optimal education setting for top students and early-career researchers in the fields of economics and mathematics, where they can grow academically in important ways already at a young age. Awarding of the medal is terrific news as well for the colleagues at our ECONtribute and Hausdorff Center for Mathematics Clusters of Excellence who co-authored the publications judged as part of the award competition. We have every reason to be proud—and we are!”
Close collaboration with the University of Bonn
Philipp Strack earned his doctorate in 2013 at the Faculty of Law and Economics after completing degrees in mathematics and economics at the University of Bonn and studying at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics. Strack is now a professor at world-renowned Yale University, where he continues to collaborate with University of Bonn researchers, with whom he has had numerous joint publications in prominent journals.
The American Economic Association focused on eight of Strack’s papers in its evaluation, four of which he co-authored with University of Bonn economists. One of these is a paper on behavioral economics penned together with Professor Botond Köszegi of the Institute for Applied Microeconomics, who is a member of the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence, formed by the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. Strack has also collaborated on new analytical approaches to mechanism design with Professor Benny Moldovanu, Professor Andreas Kleiner and Assistant Professor Mengxi Zhang, all of whom are from the Institute for Microeconomics and members of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn. Moldovanu and Kleiner are also members of ECONtribute.
“My primary associations with the University of Bonn are the people I have co-authored papers with and the friends I have made there, going back to my student days—which I really loved. I am grateful for the world-class education I received at the University of Bonn and especially at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics, which made my academic career possible,” Philipp Strack.