Sandeep Baliga is a Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences in the MEDS Department at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Professor Baliga uses game theory and the theory of incentives to study fundamental issues in economics and political science.
He has studied how power and authority should be delegated within organizations to incentivize effort and innovation. He is currently studying the make or buy decision: how to the costs of haggling and incentives to rent-seek determine when an activity should be performed within a firm and when should it be subcontracted out?
In political science, Professor Baliga has studied the strategic logic of terrorism, whether democracies are less likely to go to war than other regime types, when communication can help reduce conflict, and the impact of strategic ambiguity of weapons stockpiles on arms proliferation. He is currently studying how the strategic nature of conflict changes with the technology of war and how the the logic of deterrence changes when there is an attribution problem as in cyberattacks.
Professor Baliga read Economics at St. John's College, Cambridge University and received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University. He has been on sabbatical at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, Boston University, MIT and, most recently, Harvard. He was a Fulbright Scholar and an invited Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Professor Baliga teaches Managerial Economics, Competitive Strategy and Industrial Structure, and Leadership and Crisis Management at the MBA level and "Conflict and Cooperation" at the PhD level.
Baliga was the Managing Editor of the Berkeley Electronic Press Journals in Theoretical Economics and Associate Editor of the European Economic Review. He has published in top journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Political Economy, RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies and the Review of Financial Studies.
He blogs at Cheap Talk and is the co-creator of Purple Pricing, an innovative auction method that is being used by Northwestern University to sell football and basketball tickets. He has started a consulting company with two partners to commercialize these ideas. In his spare time, Professor Baliga likes going to concerts and the theatre. But in practice he is fully employed driving his son to hockey games.
