Advancing the public good through research

4/24/2015 - Timothy Feddersen, the Wendell Hobbs Professor of Managerial Politics and a professor in the Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences department, has been named a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“This is a well-deserved honor and a deep sign of respect from Professor Feddersen’s national colleagues,” Dean Sally Blount said.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the Academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to Academy publications and studies of science and technology policy, global security and international affairs, social policy and American institutions, and the humanities, arts and education.

“I am honored but also grateful,” said Feddersen, “grateful to my colleagues in political science for their appreciation of my contributions, but also to the institutions that make such research possible.”

Feddersen thanked both Kellogg and Northwestern for their investment and support in his research, which centers on the manner in which elections aggregate dispersed information; the linkage between information and participation in elections; modeling ethically motivated agents in games; bargaining in legislatures; and the informal role of activists in the economy.

Feddersen is currently investigating how money in politics impacts the emergence of income inequality as well as the value of transparency in advisory committees.

“My research in particular owes a debt to the support that economic and formal political theory have enjoyed [here],” he said. “Consecutive administrations have had the vision to invest and create research groups that span departments and schools.”

Members of the Academy’s 2015 class include winners of the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize; MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships; and Grammy, Emmy, Oscar and Tony Awards.

The new class will be inducted later this fall at a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Each new member is a leader in his or her field and has made a distinct contribution to the nation and the world,” said Don Randel, chair of the Academy’s board of directors, in a statement. “We look forward to engaging them in the intellectual life of this vibrant institution.”

Feddersen will join dozens of new Academy members in science and the humanities this year, including Northwestern Board of Trustees Professor of English Chris Abani. A novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright, Abani teaches creative writing (fiction and poetry) and literature.

Current academy fellows from Kellogg include Ehud Kalai, the James J. O'Connor Professor of Decision and Game Sciences, and Janice C. Eberly, the James R. and Helen D. Russell Professor of Finance and faculty director of Kellogg Public-Private Initiative (KPPI).

Feddersen joined Kellogg in 1995, and currently teaches several classes including Leadership and Strategic Crisis Management, Values-Based Leadership and Strategy in the Nonmarket Environment. All of these classes focus on how leaders must anticipate the reaction of stakeholder groups, within and outside an organization – in the media, legislatures, courts and broad public opinion. He is also the Academic Director for Kellogg Executive Education’s Crisis Management program, which equips participants with the analytics to anticipate, the strategies to avoid and the tactics to address the major types of crises encountered by organizations big and small.