In May, Glenn Ellison, the Gregory K. Palm Professor of Economics at MIT, provided courses to students in the Yonsei College of Business and Economics as SK Endowed Chair Professor.  Well known in the fields of game theory and industrial organization, Professor Ellison’s other research interests include student learning, large population and spatial models, technology adoption, geographic concentration of industries, and mutual funds. He has published widely in prestigious economics journals, while writing economics-related pieces for newspapers and authoring math textbooks for elementary and middle school students.

Converging Mathematics with Economics

 Professor Ellison’s first intellectual love was mathematics, at which he excelled in high school and as an undergraduate at Harvard. As a master’s student in economics at the University of Cambridge, however, he became passionate about economics due to the interdisciplinary nature of Cambridge’s curriculum, which allowed him to use his math skills to approach a number of real-world problems. Upon entering the Ph.D. program in economics at MIT, Professor Ellison says that he met many brilliant minds who stimulated his intellectual curiosity even further:      “There were of course many excellent professors at MIT but also there were many brilliant students. Having discussions and talks with them helped me in making academic achievements.”

Excellent Research and Award-Winning Teaching

Professor Ellison has won the MIT Graduate Economics Association Teacher of the Year Award ten times.  He attributes his teaching success to his meticulous preparation and his commitment to getting to know each of his students. Professor Ellison spends hours preparing his lecture notes, and whenever he teaches a course he makes sure to memorize each of his students’ names and know something of their background.   In terms of scholarship, Professor Ellison emphasizes that meaningful research starts with asking important questions; and to be able to do so, one must read a great many articles from a wide variety of journals. While reading, he insists, one needs to be asking questions at the same time as thinking about how to improve upon the analysis and arguments put forth in the article.  More generally, Professor Ellison believes that curiosity is essential; for instance, his recent research interest in e-commerce stems from his own experiences with online shopping. This was Professor Ellison’s first visit to an East Asian country. In his teaching at Yonsei, he encouraged undergraduate and graduate students to take full advantage of the many innovative and high-quality programs offered by the university.