BEHAVIORAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Campus Description:
Stony Brook University, home to many highly ranked graduate research programs, is located 60 miles from New York City on Long Island's scenic North Shore. Our 1,100-acre campus is home to 24,000 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students and more than 13,500 faculty and staff. The University is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and co-manager of nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research laboratory supporting world class scientific programs utilizing state-of-the-art facilities. Stony Brook University Medical Center is Suffolk County's only academic medical center and tertiary care provider. Many opportunities exist for collaborative research, and in some cases, joint appointments with BNL or with Medical School departments.
Interdisciplinary Faculty Cluster Hiring Initiative:
The position of Director of the Center of Behavioral Political Economy is part of an exciting new initiative, undertaken as part of SUNY 2020, to hire 100 faculty members over the next five years to rejuvenate the intellectual capital of Stony Brook University and expand teaching and research in emerging fields of study that cut across traditional boundaries of academic disciplines. The interdisciplinary faculty cluster hires are aimed at addressing society's most vexing challenges through the collaboration of natural, life, and social sciences; technology; medicine; humanities; policy; business; and the arts. The positions are designated for faculty members whose research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary. The goals of this initiative are to strategically place Stony Brook University on the emerging frontiers of research and knowledge and to enhance our ability to shape new fields of discovery, learning and engagement.
Cluster Hires in Behavioral Political Economy
Behavioral Political Economy studies how individual-level mechanisms, beliefs, and decision-making processes relate to economic decisions. Grounded in the psychology of decision theory and primarily relying on experimentation, it is a bottom-up approach to understanding actual market behavior as opposed to relying on theoretical assumptions of how rational consumers should behave in a global economy. It tests models of man as a selfish utility-maximizing agent and offers alternative theoretical models that incorporate legal and regulatory regimes, emotions, altruism, sense of fairness, inequity aversion, and so on. In addition, BPE involves designing incentives and institutions that account for the systematic biases in and heuristics used by people.Extending the models of Behavioral Economics, accompanied by the development of the standard models to be confronted with survey data or experimental data, to explain substantive phenomenon in finance (e.g. consumer behavior), economics (e.g. regulation, design of public programs and public institutions), or political science (e.g. law and economics), rounds out the wider field of Behavioral Political Economy.With the new cluster Stony Brook will become a national leader in behavioral economics, political economy, laboratory experiments, and income inequality. Scientists from the Departments of Political Sciences, Economics, and the College of Business will be part of this cutting-edge, world-class research group while building on their existing strengths in these areas. We expect to make 5 hires over the next 2-3 years as part of the cluster to build on our existing strengths in these areas.
Director of Center for Behavioral Political Economy:
For the position of Director of the Center for Behavioral Political Economy, we are looking for a prominent scholar who has an established record of employing the research methods of behavioral economics in addition to a record of relevant academic publications and external funding to conduct laboratory experiments. Additional areas of expertise may be in explaining substantive phenomenon in finance (e.g. consumer behavior), economics (e.g. regulation, design of public programs and public institutions), or political science (e.g. law and economics).The ideal candidate is substantively interested in behavioral political economy overlapping economics, business, and political science. S/he has a track record of successful interdisciplinary research: (1) external funding from NSF and other agencies’ cross-cutting programs, (2) publications in general science journals (such as Science or PNAS), or journals representing different disciplines (economics, business, psychology, political science), and (3) administrative experience; a record of department and university service. The Director of the CBPE will play a key leadership role overseeing the Center, designing and managing long-term strategic goals, and coordinating with the chairs of the Departments of Economics and Political Science and the Dean of the College of Business for growth opportunities and further hiring strategies. The Director will be teaching courses at the PhD, Masters, and undergraduate level in Experimental Economics, Experimental Design, and Political Economy, and will bring together students from the three units and tie together their programs. Collaborations that begin in the classroom will carry over into the Center.
Application Procedure
The State University of New York at Stony Brook is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Applications from women, people of color, disabled individuals, special disabled veterans or Vietnam era veterans are especially welcome. This position is subject to budgetary approval. If you require a disability related accommodation, please contact Ms. Pamela Wolfskill, 631-632-7688. We will primarily consider all applications received by February 28, 2013, although we will continue to accept applications after that date. Submit letter of application, c.v., names of references on-line at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/2265 or alternatively by post to Chair, CBPE Director Search, Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4392.
