Alexander Jakobsen
Associate Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences
Alexander Jakobsen is an Associate Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences. His research interests include microeconomic theory, decision theory, and behavioral economics. Prior to joining Kellogg, he completed his PhD in Economics at Princeton University and was a faculty member at the University of Calgary from 2017 to 2022.
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Associate Editor, Canadian Journal of Economics, 2025
Economic Theory I: Perspectives on Behavioral Economics (MECS-550-1)
This course focuses on formal theories of individual and strategic behavior, ranging from classic expected utility to models incorporating psychology, bounded rationality, and other empirically motivated departures from standard frameworks. Topics span a variety of theoretical methodologies and include applications to information economics, search, and mechanism design from a behavioral perspective; the selection covered may vary with available time/interests.
Behavioral Economics and Competitive Strategy (MECN-943-0)
Economic models make several simplifying assumptions about human behavior. All the standard economic prescriptions for pricing, output choice, long term investment, managing competition in oligopolies, etc flow from these assumptions. Through cases, experiments, and formal modeling, students will learn how the optimal strategies of profit-maximizing firms are affected by the recognition that psychological phenomena influence the decision-making of consumers and other market players. The course will involve a significant degree of formal modeling, and will build on core concepts from economics, including individual preferences, decision under risk, monopoly pricing, market behavior, game theory, and strategic bargaining. The course will build on economic reasoning and techniques covered in MECN 430 (Microeconomic Analysis).
