Printable Biography of Barry Nalebuff

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Barry Nalebuff, the Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale School of Management, is co-author with Adam Brandenburger of CO-OPETITION. His first book, THINKING STRATEGICALLY: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life, written with Avinash Dixit, is a popular business school text. It has been translated into seven languages and was a bestseller in Japan. A consultant, as well as a scholar, Nalebuff applies Game Theory to his work with Fortune 500 clients and in antitrust litigation. He has advised American Express, Bell Atlantic, Citibank, Corning, General Re, Merck, and Procter and Gamble, among others. Nalebuff has worked with McKinsey and Co. to help bring game theory into their consulting practice and with the Federal Communications Commission in the design of the Personal Communication Spectrum Auction and then with the Bell Atlantic-Nynex-Airtouch-US West consortium as their bidding consultant. He serves as a director of Bear Stearns Financial Products and the Connecticut Citizenship Fund.

At Yale, Nalebuff teaches a wide variety of courses. At the management school, he teaches competitive (and cooperative) strategy, mergers and acquisitions, political-economic marketing and game theory and decision-making. He also teaches a course in negotiation strategy at Yale’s law school and an undergraduate course on political theory in the Ethics, Politics, and Economics program. Actively involved in the Yale community, Nalebuff wrestles with budget deficits, ever-rising tuition, and faculty hiring and promotions as a member of the university budget committee and the management school’s appointment committee. Prior to Yale, Nalebuff was an assistant professor at Princeton University (1985-89) and a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University (1982-85).

His interest in economics and game theory began with his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1980 with degrees in Economics and Mathematics. A Rhodes Scholarship took him to Oxford University where, two years later, he received a doctorate in economics and the George Webb Medley thesis prize. The Harvard Society of Fellows brought Nalebuff back to the United States. This award, given to eight people a year, across all fields from archaeology to zoology, funds the recipients to pursue any interests for three years. (“The only requirement,” he says, “was to turn up every Monday night for dinner with the other Fellows. Only now, in retrospect, do I realize the value of those three years without any teaching responsibilities.”)

After Harvard, Nalebuff moved to Princeton University to work with Joseph Stiglitz. At Princeton, he was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Bicentennial Preceptorship, and three National Science Foundation awards. In his spare time, he wrote a puzzles column for the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

In addition to his books, Nalebuff writes extensively on the application of game theory to business and politics. He has written dozens of academic papers, as well as the lead article in the July- August 1995 issue of the Harvard Business Review “The Right Game: Using Game Theory to Shape Strategy,” written with Adam Brandenburger. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and was previously an associate editor of the leading politics journal, World Politics. His op-ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and the Washington Post. One such piece in October 1991, applied game theory to politics to argue that a Clinton-Gore ticket was the Democrat’s best strategy to beat Bush. Frequently quoted in magazines and newspapers on business strategy, Nalebuff was featured in a Forbes magazine cover story on Game Theory.

Nalebuff lectures and gives executive forums and training programs throughout the U.S., as well as internationally, designed to teach people how to think strategically. He began his public speaking career early when, while still in high school, he surreptitiously won Yale’s sophomore oratory contest, much to the consternation of one particular Yale professor. “After that experience, a Yale degree wasn’t an option, although Yale finally let me in as a professor,” says Nalebuff.
An avid squash player, Nalebuff says, “One of the greatest features of MIT was that I could play Varsity squash. Alas, that might not have happened elsewhere.” At MIT, he also learned to ride a unicycle. “It’s amazing, but just like a bicycle, you don’t forget how.” He also began playing the oriental game of “Go” at MIT, where he became head of the “Go” Club-”an honor given to the worst player.” More seriously, he confides, “MIT had the world’s greatest economics department and I had the great privilege to learn from such luminary professors as Robert Solow, Paul Samuelson, and Jerry Hausman.”

Born in the Boston area, Nalebuff lives in New Haven, CT with his wife, Helen Kauder, and their two children. Barry met Helen at his MIT dorm when she was a freshman and he was a junior. They’ve been together ever since, except for extended periods of time when their various educational and career pursuits put them in different cities-or even on different continents.

Helen, who for 12 years handled relationships with Asia for Citibank, just joined Yale University as Director of Licensing. Tri-lingual, speaking Chinese and French as well as English, she has passed her skills on to their daughters Rachel and Zo. “As a result,” says Nalebuff, “I’m learning Mandarin from my kids.”