Who is Jerry A. Hausman?
Jerry A. Hausman is a professor of economics at MIT and the head of the Telecommunications Economics Research Program. Dr. Hausman has done much work on applied microeconomics, econometrics, differentiated goods, telecoms, taxes, energy, the environment, and getting older.
Life and Work
His first job at MIT was as an assistant professor in 1973. Jerry A. Hausman was born in West Virginia in 1946. He was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University and got his Ph.D. there. He has won many prizes, awards, and fellowships, such as the Frisch Medal and the John Bates Clark Award. Dr. Hausman has written many papers and has been an associate or advice editor for many economics magazines.
According to Dr. Hausman, a brilliant economist like him can work behind the scenes in business. He has been an adviser for Starbucks, Kellogg’s, Anheuser-Busch, Tesco, and Home Depot. Teikametrics, a Retail Optimization Platform (ROP) for Amazon and other marketplace sellers, hired him as a science assistant in 2018. “We can help millions of sellers by using data and econometrics to help them make better choices about pricing, advertising, and what items to sell.” Hausman said, “The technology we are making at Teikametrics helps brands and retailers compete in this fast-paced new retail economy. This is the future of retail.” With a data scientist like Dr. Hausman on board, Amazon should be able to use even more advanced data science techniques, making the online giant even stronger.
What They Did
Hausman has written many study papers on both academic and practical aspects of econometrics. He is best known for creating the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test. He has also done much work on the telecommunications business and figured out how to estimate price indexes.
Test of Durbin-Wu-Hausman
It is a well-known statistical test that measures how well statistical models match the available data. The Durbin-Wu-Hausman test checks for endogeneity in an economic model. It helps statisticians determine if a model will work in the end for calculating p-values, which are the final word on whether something is statistically significant.
Telecommunications Business
People know that Hausman knows a lot about the business of the telecoms industry. He has done a lot of applied study in this area, from how taxes and rules affect business to how new cell phones and networks help consumers. For example, his work on telecom taxation has shown that taxes on digital services can hurt the economy much more than they help states make money.
Lists of prices
In his most recent work, Hausman has also looked at price measures like the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and how lower prices at giant discount stores help customers. His research shows that the CPI is heavily skewed upward because it doesn’t take into account the lower prices that stores like Walmart supercenters offer, the changes in shopping habits that happen as people take advantage of the lower prices, and the improvement in the quality of the different products and services that these stores offer.
Conclusion
- An economist and applied econometrician named Jerry Hausman works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
- Hausman is famous for creating the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test for statistical model selection.
- He has done a lot of work on the economics of the telecommunications business and on estimating price indices as part of his applied study.