John Hatfield
Professor, Departments of Finance; and Business, Government & Society | The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
Austin, TX, UNITED STATES
How rules and regulations impact market functions and outcomes; matching theory, and interactions of business and non-market forces
Areas of Expertise (13)
Political Economy
Market Regulation
Matching Theory
Price Controls
Supply Chain Networks
Non-Price Competition
Trade Policy
Game Theory
Tax Policy and Allocation
Management Strategy
Political and Social Environment for Business
Market Design
Microeconomic Theory
Biography
John W. Hatfield is an educator and researcher who studies market design, an engineering-oriented field of economic theory that considers how the design of the rules and regulations of a market affects the functioning and outcomes of that market. Hatfield also specializes in political economy, the interactions of business and non-market forces such as governments, legal bodies, activist groups and the media.
He researches matching theory, a field of economics that studies markets in which agents have explicit preferences over whom they buy from and sell to, not just over the underlying goods bought and sold. Examples of such economies include the markets for medical residency positions, the assignment of students to public schools, and the formation of collaborative research enterprises.
Hatfield is an associate professor in the departments of finance, and business, government & society at the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. He was previously an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford University, and a research fellow at Harvard Business School.
His work in market design has led to a deeper understanding of such diverse markets as kidney exchange, assigning U.S. Army military cadets to branches of service, and the dynamics of shareholder voting. He has also contributed to our understanding of federalism, in particular how the assignment of tax and expenditure powers to either local or central governments affects economic policy.
Hatfield currently teaches a class on advanced managerial strategy, focusing on using the tools of economics to enhance managers' understanding of contractual relationships within firms, interactions between firms, and the legal environment in which firms operate. He also teaches a PhD course on market design.
He is on the board of editors of the Journal of Economic Literature, and is an associate editor for Economic Theory.
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Education (2)
Stanford University: Ph.D. , Economics 2005
California Institute of Technology: B.S. , Mathematics and Physics 2000
(Honors) Activities and Societies: Opinions Editor for the California Tech (student newspaper), Ph 11 participant, SURF
Articles (8)
John W. Hatfield Citations
Google Scholar
Listing of top scholarly works by John W. Hatfield.
The Design of Debt Clearing Markets: Clearinghouse Mechanisms in Pre-Industrial Europe
Journal of Political Economy
2017-12-01
We examine the evolution of the decentralized clearinghouse mechanisms that were in use throughout Europe from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth century; in particular, we explore the clearing of nontradable or limited-tradable debts such as bills of exchange.
Stable and Strategy-Proof Matching with Flexible Allotments
American Economic Review
2017-05-01
Building upon our recent work on observable substitutability, we show that multi-division choice functions with flexible allotments enable stable and strategy-proof matching; these results illustrate the value of clearly mapping when stable and strategy-proof matching is possible.
Improving Schools Through School Choice: A Market Design Approach
Journal of Economic Theory
2016-11-01
We study the effect of different centralized public school choice mechanisms on schools' incentives for quality improvement.
Multilateral Matching
Journal of Economic Theory
2015-03-01
We introduce a matching model in which agents engage in joint ventures via multilateral contracts. This approach allows us to consider production complementarities previously outside the scope of matching theory.
Electoral Regime and Trade Policy
Journal of Comparative Economics
2014-08-01
We study how trade protection varies with the electoral rules for legislative representation. In particular, we investigate different hypotheses about why trade policy differs between countries with legislatures elected by a plurality election rule in single member constituencies and legislatures elected by a proportional, or party-list, rule.
Federal Competition and Economic Growth
Journal of Public Economics
2013-01-01
This paper exploits exogenous variation in the natural topography of the United States to estimate the causal impact of inter-jurisdictional competition on income growth.
Vacancies in Supply Chain Networks
Economics Letters
2013-06-01
We use the supply chain matching framework to study the effects of firm exit. We show that the exit of an initial supplier or end consumer has monotonic effects on the welfare of initial suppliers and end consumers but may simultaneously have positive and negative effects on intermediaries.
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