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PJ Lamberson
PJ Lamberson

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONS
Senior Lecturer of Management & Organizations

Print Overview
PJ Lamberson is a Senior Lecturer in the Management and Organizations Department and a Senior Research Associate at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). Before coming to Northwestern, PJ was a Senior Lecturer in the System Dynamics group at MIT Sloan and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD in Mathematics from Columbia University in 2006. PJ’s research uses modeling to understand the theory and applications of social dynamics and networks. His research addresses questions such as how do information, products, and behaviors spread through networks, how should members be selected for a forecasting team, and why do people turn out to vote. His work has appeared in Management Science, Economics Letters, Connections, Transactions of the American Mathematics Society, and Ecological Modeling. He designed and teaches the course Social Dynamics and Networks.

Areas of Expertise
Behavioral Economics
Computational Economics
Consumer Decision-Making
Economic Models
Economic Theory
Group Decision-Making
Information Economics
Innovation
Print Vita
Education
Ph.D., 2006, Mathematics, Columbia University
M.Phil, 2005, Mathematics, Columbia University
M.A., 2003, Mathematics, Columbia University
B.A, 2001, Mathematics, University of Chicago, Honors in the College and Honors in Mathematics

Academic Positions
Visiting Scholar, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University , 2011-present
Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 2010-2011
Visiting Assistant Professor, Sloan School of Management, MIT , 2008-2010
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, 2006-2008

 
Print Research
Research Interests
Social dynamics, social influence, complex systems, networks, diffusion

Articles
Lamberson, PJ. Forthcoming. Increasing Returns with Screening: Explaining the Prevalence of Power Law Market Share Distributions in Markets with Social Influence.
Lamberson, PJ. Forthcoming. Linking Network Structure and Diffusion through Stochastic Dominance.
Lamberson, PJ and Scott E. Page. Forthcoming. Optimal Forecasting Groups. Management Science.
Lamberson, PJ and Scott E. Page. Forthcoming. The Effect of Feedback Variability on Success in Markets with Positive Feedbacks.
Lamberson, PJ and Scott E. Page. Forthcoming. Tipping Points.
Lamberson, PJ. 2010. A Typology of Mechanisms that Generate Clustering in Networks. American Journal of Epidemiology.(171): Suppl 11.
Lamberson, PJ. 2009. The Milnor Fiber Conjecture and Iterated Branched Cyclic Covers. American Mathematical Society. 9(361): 4653—4681.
Lamberson, PJ. 2008. The Diffusion of Hybrid Electric Vehicles.
Wildhaber, Mark L. and PJ Lamberson. 2004. Importance of the Habitat Choice Behavior Assumed when Modeling the Effects of Food and Temperature on Fish Populations. Ecological Modelling. 4(175): 395—409.
Wildhaber, Mark L., PJ Lamberson and David L. Galat. 2003. A Comparison of Measures of Riverbed Form for Evaluating Distributions of Benthic Fishes. North American Journal of Fisheries Management. 23: 543—557.
Lamberson, William R., PJ Lamberson and Laura L. Melton. 2002. A Relationship-based Algorithm for Identifying Genetically Diverse Subpopulations. Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production. 28: 24-26.
Wildhaber, Mark L., JoAnne E. Whitaker, Ann L. Allert, Daniel W. Mulhern, PJ Lamberson and Kenneth L. Powell. 2000. Ictalurid Populations in Relation to the Presence of a Main-stem Reservoir in a Midwestern Warmwater Stream with Emphasis on the Threatened Neosho Madtom. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. 129: 1264—1280.
Working Papers
Shoham, DA, L Tong, PJ Lamberson, AH Auchincloss, J Zhang, LR Dugas, JS Kaufman and R. S. Cooper. An Actor-based Model of Adolescent Body Size, Screen Time, and Physical Activity.
Lamberson, PJ. Friendship-based Games.
Lamberson, PJ. Social Influence in the Calculus of Voting.

 
Print Teaching
Teaching Interests
Social dynamics, networks, modeling, system dynamics, complexity, decision making
Full-Time / Part-Time MBA
Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DECS-433-0)

This course counts toward the following majors: Decision Sciences.

Provides frameworks for reasoning about decisions in uncertain environments. Case studies and experiments are used to motivate the importance of probabilistic reasoning to avoid the systematic biases that cloud managers' decision making. Formal probabilistic tools are introduced and their relevance to modern business issues is conveyed via cases, exercises, and class experiments. Some of the applications include: inventory management with uncertain demand, principal-agent models, herd behavior, selection bias, rare events, real options and risk. The course is self-contained, and should be of value to all students, including those with prior exposure to formal probability models.

Social Dynamics and Networks (MORS-945-0)
Today’s business leaders face unparalleled levels of connectedness and complexity. To help students meet these challenges, Social Dynamics and Networks provides an in-depth introduction to the emerging fields of social dynamics and network science including social networks, social media, tipping points, contagion, the wisdom of crowds, prediction markets, and social capital. Using simple yet powerful hands-on interactive models and exercises, the course covers both theory and applications of social dynamics for organizational growth, leadership, and competitiveness. The course was developed jointly with Professor Uzzi and complements the MORS 430 leadership and organizations course

Executive MBA
Social Dynamics & Networks (MORSX-945-0)