Letter From the Chair
Welcome to the Economics Division of Columbia Business School!
Economic theory provides entrepreneurs, managers, business leaders, and policy makers with the framework and tools to make and evaluate various business decisions and policies.
Our faculty teaches students how to think about economic decisions in a structured and critical way, giving them the tools to make and evaluate business decisions. In addition to a micro-economic perspective, we also give students the tools to understand the global macro-economy in which their business operates; how it is today and how it is likely to evolve in the future.
The Economics Division faculty leads research in various fields, such as macro-and microeconomic theory, labor economics, international economics, development, public-economics, organizational and industrial economics, and political economics. Members of the division include a Nobel Prize winner, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, a former Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, former Chief Economists of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, two Fellows of the Econometrics Society, and several editors of leading economics journalists.
Our faculty have received numerous teaching awards in recent years for both the core course on Managerial Economics and the core course on Global Economic Environment. For an overview of the electives offered by the Economics division, please click here.
Nachum Sicherman
Carson Family Professor of Business
Chair of the Economics Division
In the Media
Other Research
Proximity Bias: Motivated Effects of Spatial Distance on Probability Judgments
Thompson Sampling with Information Relaxation Penalties
We consider a finite-horizon multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in a Bayesian setting, for which we propose an information relaxation sampling framework. With this framework, we define an intuitive family of control policies that include Thompson sampling (TS) and the Bayesian optimal policy as endpoints. Analogous to TS, which, at each decision epoch pulls an arm that is best with respect to the randomly sampled parameters, our algorithms sample entire future reward realizations and take the corresponding best action.
Utilizing Partial Flexibility to Improve Emergency Department Flow: Theory and Implementation
Emergency Departments (EDs) typically have multiple areas where patients of different acuity levels receive treatments. In practice, different areas often operate with fixed nurse staffing levels. When there are substantial imbalances in congestion among different areas, it could be beneficial to deviate from the original assignment and reassign nurses. However, reassignments typically are only feasible at the beginning of 8-12-hour shifts, providing partial flexibility in adjusting staffing levels.
