Michael Powell
Associate Professor of Strategy
Associate Chair, Strategy Department
Michael Powell received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011. He is currently Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the Strategy Department. Prior to coming to Kellogg, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of Applied Economics at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Professor Powell's research interests include organizational economics, personnel economics, and industrial organization. His work has been published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Labor Economics, RAND Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, and Games and Economic Behavior. He is an associate editor at ?RAND Journal of Economics and was previously a co-editor at ?Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization?.
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Ph.D, 2011, Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MA, 2006, Economics, University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., 2006, Economics, University of California, Los Angeles
A.A., 2003, Liberal Arts, West Valley College -
Assistant Professor of Management and Strategy, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2013-present
Donald P. Jacobs Scholar & Assistant Professor of Management & Strategy, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2012-2013
Postdoctoral Fellow in Applied Economics, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011-2012 -
Program committee: NBER Organizational Economics (2009, 2011), 2009-2011
Referee for: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Public Economics -
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2007-2011
MIT Presidential Fellowship, 2006-2008
UCLA Departmental Scholar in Economics, 2004-2006 -
Associate Editor, RAND Journal of Economics, 2020
Economics of Organizations I: Organizations and Markets (MECS-570-1)
This course provides an introduction to the economics of organizations. To this end, it covers a variety of topics including incentives in organizations; delegation, cheap talk, and adaptation; firm boundaries, structures, and processes. In order to understand how organizations interact in markets and influence the broader economy, we cannot view organizational practices as completely divorced from the underlying economic context.
Research in Economics (MECS-560-3)
This course introduces first-year PhD students to the economics research environment. With an emphasis on breadth, and minimal prerequisite knowledge at the graduate level, students are exposed to the process of forming and answering research questions. The course involves multiple faculty providing their perspective on successful approaches to research by highlighting significant recent works in their respective fields of interest.
Strategy and Organization (STRT-452-0)
This course focuses on the link between organizational structure and strategy, making use of the microeconomic tools taught in MECN-430. The core question is how firms should be organized to achieve their performance objectives. The first part of the course takes the firm's activities as given and studies the problem of organizational design; topics may include incentive pay, decentralization, transfer pricing, behavioral biases, and complementarities. The second part examines the determinants of a firm's boundaries and may cover such topics as outsourcing, horizontal mergers, and strategic commitment.
