Edward Ludwig Glaeser (born May 1, 1967) is an economist at Harvard University. He was educated at The Collegiate School in New York City before obtaining his B.A. in economics from Princeton University and his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. Glaeser joined the faculty of Harvard in 1993, where he is currently Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor at the Department of Economics and Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and the Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston (both at the Kennedy School of Government), in addition to being an editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Glaeser's connections with both Chicago and Harvard makes him a linkage between the Chicago School and the Cambridge School of Economics. Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... Collegiate School is a private school for boys in New York City and lays claim to being the oldest school in the United States. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... For other uses, see University of Chicago (disambiguation). ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... John F. Kennedy School of Government The John F. Kennedy School of Government is a public policy school and one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. ... The Quarterly Journal of Economics, or QJE, is an economics journal published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... The Chicago school of economics is a school of thought favoring free-market economics practiced at and disseminated from the University of Chicago in the middle of the 20th century. ...

"A Jack of all Trades"

Glaeser has made substantial contributions to the empirical study of urban economics. In particular, his work examining the historical evolution of economic hubs like Boston and New York City has had major influence on both economics and urban geography. Glaeser also has written widely on a variety of other topics, ranging from social economics to the economics of religion, from both contemporary and historical perspectives. Broadly, Urban Economics is the economic study of urban areas. ... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe)1, Athens of America, The Cradle of Revolution, Puritan City, Americas Walking City Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas M. Menino(D) Area    - City 232. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

His work has earned the admiration of a number of prominent economists. George Akerlof (2001 Economics Nobel Prize) praised Glaeser as a "genius," and Gary Becker (1992 Economics Nobel Prize) commented that before Glaeser "urban economics was dried up. No one had come up with some new ways to look at cities." [1] George Arthur Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. ... Gary Stanley Becker (born December 2, 1930) is an economist and a Nobel laureate. ...

Despite the seeming disparateness of the topics he has examined, most of Glaeser's work can be said to apply economic theory (and especially price theory and game theory) to explain human economic and social behavior. Glaeser develops models using these tools and then evaluates them with real world data, so as to verify their applicability. A number of his most influential papers in applied economics are co-written with his Harvard colleague, Andrei Shleifer. Microeconomics (or price theory) is a cool branch of economics that studies how individuals, households, and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources,[1] typically in markets where goods or services are being bought and sold. ... Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in the context of economics. ... Andrei Shleifer (born February 20, 1961) is a prominent academic economist. ...

Contribution to Urban Economics

Glaeser's empirical research has offered a distinctive explanation for the increase in housing prices in many parts of the United States over the past several decades. A number of pundits and commentators attribute skyrocketing housing prices to a housing bubble created by the monetary policies of Alan Greenspan. Glaeser points out that the increase in housing prices has not been uniform throughout the country. In fact, the most dramatic increases have occurred in places like Boston, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California, where permits for new buildings have been difficult to obtain since the 1970s. This, compounded with strident zoning laws, seriously disrupted the supply of new housing in these cities. Real estate markets were thus unable to accommodate increases in demand, and housing prices skyrocketed. Glaeser also points to the experience of states such as Arizona and Texas, which experienced tremendous growth in demand for real estate during the same period but, thanks to looser regulations and the comparative ease of obtaining new building permits, did not witness abnormal increases in housing prices. Alan Greenspan (born March 6, 1926 in New York City) is an American economist and was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. ...

Contribution to Health Economics

In 2003 Glaeser collaborated with David Cutler and Jesse Shapiro on a research paper that attempted to explain why Americans had become more obese. According to the abstract of their paper,[2] Americans have become more obese over the past 25 years because they "have been consuming more calories. The increase in food consumption is itself the result of technological innovations which made it possible for food to be mass prepared far from the point of consumption, and consumed with lower time costs of preparation and cleaning. Price changes are normally beneficial, but may not be if people have self-control problems." Dave Cutler (born March 13, 1942) is a noted software engineer, designer and developer of several operating systems including the RSX-11, VMS and VAXELN systems of Digital Equipment Corporation and Windows NT from Microsoft. ...

Undergraduate Teaching

At Harvard, Glaeser regularly teaches an undergraduate course on intermediate microeconomic theory,[3]. It's interesting to note that Glaeser was denied undergraduate admission to Harvard, although he was accepted to Princeton.

Popular writings

In 2006 Glaeser began writing a regular column for the New York Sun. The modern New York Sun is a daily newspaper published in New York City. ...

External links

• NY Times Magazine Feature Story on Glaeser
• Glaeser on the differences between U.S and European welfare policies
• Glaeser's homepage at the Harvard department of economics
• Podcast featuring Glaeser Glaeser discusses paternalism on EconTalk.