B. Douglas Bernheim

B. Douglas Bernheim is the Edward Ames Edmonds Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Stanford University.

Professor Bernheim’s work has spanned a variety of fields, including public economics, behavioral economics, game theory, contract theory, industrial organization, political economy, and financial economics.  His notable contributions include the following: in the area of game theory, introducing and exploring the concepts of rationalizability (thereby helping to launch the field of epistemic game theory), coalition-proofness, and collective dynamic consistency (also known as renegotiation-proofness); in the area of incentive theory, introducing and exploring the concepts of common agency and menu auctions, and developing a theory of incomplete contracts; in the area of industrial organization, developing theories of multimarket contact and exclusive dealing; concerning social motives in economics, introducing and exploring the concept of strategic bequest motives, and developing theories of conformity, Veblen effects, and the equal division norm; developing and applying a framework for behavioral welfare economics; developing an economic theory of addictive behaviors; conducting the earliest economic analyses of financial education; and analyzing the conceptual foundations for Ricardian equivalence.