A. Michael Spence, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, has been named a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He also is Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
"We're so very pleased to welcome Mike Spence as a Hoover fellow," said Hoover Institution director John Raisian. "He brings a wealth of experience and talent to Hoover, and we're thrilled that yet another Nobel laureate joins our scholarly ranks."
Spence is the fifth Hoover fellow who also is a Nobel laureate.
Spence served as Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999. As dean, he oversaw the finances, organization, and educational policies of the school. Since 1999, he has been a partner at Oak Hill Capital Partners in Menlo Park.
He taught at Stanford as an associate professor of economics from 1973 to 1975.
From 1975 to 1990, he served as professor of economics and business administration at Harvard University, holding a joint appointment in its Business School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In l983, he was named chairman of the Economics Department and George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration. Spence was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching in 1978 and the John Bates Clark medal in 1981 for a "significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."
From 1984 to 1990, Spence served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, overseeing Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education.
From 1977-1979, he was a member of Economics Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation and in 1979 served as a member of the Sloan Foundation Economics Advisory Committee. At various times, he has served as a member of the editorial boards of American Economics Review, Bell Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, and Public Policy.
Among his many honors, Spence was elected a fellow of the America Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983 and was awarded the David A. Wells Prize for outstanding doctoral dissertation at Harvard University in 1972.
He is a member of the boards of directors for General Mills, Siebel Systems, Nike Inc., and Exult Inc. From 1991 to 1997, he was chairman of the National Research Council Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy.
He also is a member of the American Economic Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.
Among his many publications are Competitive Structure in Investment Banking, with Samuel Hayes and David Marks (Harvard University Press, 1983); Industrial Organization in an Open Economy, with R. E. Caves and M. E. Porter (Harvard University Press, 1980); and Market Signaling: Informational Transfer in Hiring and Related Processes (Harvard University Press, 1974).
Spence was named a Danforth Fellow and a Rhodes Scholar, both in 1966. He was awarded a B.A. summa cum laude degree from Princeton University in 1966, a B.A.-M.A. degree from Oxford University in 1968 and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Harvard in 1972.
The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic public policy and international affairs, with an internationally renowned archives.
