Michael Schwarz is a Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo! Research in Berkeley, CA. Prior to joining Yahoo! he was a National Fellow at the Hoover institution at Stanford, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar at UC Berkeley he was on the faculty at Harvard University Economics Department from 1999 to 2004.
He is also a member of the NBER. Dr. Schwarz specializes in economic theory and its applications to business decision making and public policy.
He works on a wide range of topics that include auction theory, decision making under uncertainty, economics of standards, economics of drug procurement and Medicare part D, and microstructure of financial markets.
His current work applies game theory to the market for Internet advertisement and marketplace design.
Dr. Schwarz work appeared in scholarly journals including AER, RAND etc. His academic papers received attention in popular press.
Business Week reported that as a result of publication of the paper by Dr. Schwarz and two of his students "Close-mouthed Google has opened up about AdWords since the three economists cracked its code" (March 6, 2006).
Dr. Schwarz work was profiled in a number of other outlets including the front page of the Wall Street Journal.