Marina Halac and Philipp Strack Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Yale economists Marina Halac and Philipp Strack have been elected as new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of their contributions to economics.

Halac and Strack are among the nearly 250 leaders, including eight from Yale, elected this year in recognition of their notable achievements in academia, industry, policy, research, and science. The academy—an honorary society and independent policy organization with initiatives in the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, and science—elects new members each year.

“These new members’ accomplishments speak volumes about the human capacity for discovery, creativity, leadership, and persistence,” said Academy President Laurie L. Patton. “They are a stellar testament to the power of knowledge to broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding. We invite every new member to celebrate their achievement and join the Academy in our work to promote the common good.”

Read the full Academy 2025 Election Announcement.

Marina Halac, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics, joined the Yale faculty in 2018. An economic theorist, her research is in the areas of game theory, contract theory, and mechanism design.

Halac’s research focuses on understanding how incentives are shaped by contracting constraints and the information environment. She has developed dynamic contracts models to study issues such as the structure and breakdown of employment relationships, the problem of how to motivate experimentation and innovation, and the role of reputation in maintaining productivity. She has extensive work on delegation, with an emphasis on how to design fiscal and monetary policy rules in the presence of political biases. Most recently, she has studied the effects of externalities in multi-agent contracting settings, shedding light on the drivers of price dispersion and pay discrimination. While motivated by applied questions, Halac’s research often involves the formulation of theoretical models with conceptual or methodological innovations.

"I’m currently pursuing two main research agendas,” Halac said. “One explores how a principal should contract with agents to achieve coordination. The other examines the effects of lack of commitment on policy and the design of policy rules."

View Professor Halac’s full research portfolio here.

Philipp Strack, the Cowles Foundation Professor of Economics, joined the Yale faculty in 2019. An economic theorist, his research lies in the areas of behavioral economics, information, and mechanism design.

Strack’s work has examined the limits of behavioral theories, showing the care needed to interpret and measure empirical facts. His accomplishments include contributions to studies of mechanism design and decision-making, particularly in settings that involve learning and information transmission; the formalization of ideas, such as information cost functions or notions of privacy, so that these concepts can be more fruitfully applied; and the development of a new analytical approach to mechanism design. Recent research includes work on the optimal taxation of goods with negative externalities (such as CO2 emissions), how people mispredict their behaviors, and how private information and signals can affect algorithmic fairness, price discrimination, and information design.

“A topic which is on my mind at the moment (but at a very early stage of the research process) is social coordination,” Strack said. “For example, what is the role of information in helping people to coordinate on an action like protest that is beneficial to the group, but individually costly?”

View Professor Strack’s full research portfolio here.

“The Academy honors excellence across a wide range of disciplines and professions, and our newly elected members have demonstrated expertise and leadership of astonishing breadth and impact,” said AAAS Chair of the Board Goodwin Liu, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. “We look forward to engaging their diverse talents and experiences through Academy initiatives that bring interdisciplinary inquiry and unfettered pursuit of knowledge to bear on our society's greatest challenges.”

Halac and Strack join several other members of the Department of Economics who have been elected in past years, including Joseph Altonji, Orazio Attanasio, Dirk Bergemann, Steven Berry, Xiaohong Chen, Judith Chevalier, John Geanakoplos, Pinelopi Goldberg, Samuel Kortum, Costas Meghir, William Nordhaus, Rohini Pande, Peter Phillips, Mark Rosenzweig, Larry Samuelson, and Robert Shiller.

This year’s other newly elected members who currently serve on the Yale faculty include Ned Blackhawk (history), Gary Brudvig (chemistry), Jennifer Gandhi (political science), Valentina Greco (cellular and developmental biology), Oona A. Hathaway (law), and Caryl Phillips (literature). The new members will be inducted during a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts in October.

About: The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges. The academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and other early leaders of the United States with the purpose of honoring exceptionally accomplished individuals and engaging them in the betterment of society. The first members elected in 1781 included Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.