Eric Budish is the Paul G. McDermott Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Co-Director of The Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets at Chicago Booth, and the Krane Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. 

Budish’s main area of research is market design, with specific topics studied including financial markets, matching markets, ticket markets, blockchains and cryptocurrencies, and incentives for innovation. His most recent research has concerned various aspects of the Covid-19 crisis, especially on how to use market design to accelerate global vaccination.

Budish’s work proposing frequent batch auctions as an alternative to continuous trading on financial exchanges, to address the negative aspects of high-frequency trading, received the AQR Insight Award and the Leo Melamed Award; has been discussed in major policy addresses by the NY Attorney General and the SEC Chair; and has influenced exchange design proposals in both stock markets and futures markets. His research on patent design and cancer R&D, which shows how flawed innovation incentives led to underinvestment in long-term research for cancer prevention, received the Kauffman/iHEA Award for Health Care Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research, and the Arrow Award for the best paper in Health Economics. His research on matching theory developed a new market design, which applies price-theoretic competitive equilibrium ideas to a non-money matching market, that is now in use at many universities for matching students to schedules of courses.

Budish received his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University, his MPhil in Economics from Oxford (Nuffield College), and his BA in Economics and Philosophy from Amherst College. Prior to graduate school, Budish was an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Budish’s honors include giving the 2017 AEA-AFA joint luncheon address, the Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Marshall Scholarship.