Jeffrey Ely is the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Economics and Director of the Northwestern University Center for Economic Theory.

Ely conducts research on microeconomic theory, with a focus on mechanism design, the foundations of game theory, and evolution. Ely is currently on the editorial boards of Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory and Theoretical Economics, an online, open-access journal on economic theory.

He has been the recipient of many awards, including an Israel-United States Bi-National Science Foundation Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Dissertation Fellowship. Most recently, Professor Ely was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2009.

With economics professor Sandeep Baliga, Ely writes “Cheap Talk,” an economics and politics blog.

From 1996 to 2003, Ely was an assistant professor at Northwestern. He then joined the faculty at Boston University as an associate professor. Ely rejoined the Northwestern faculty in 2004 as a professor of economics. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996.