W. Bentley MacLeod is Sami Mnaymneh Professor of Economics, Professor of International and Public Affairs and an affiliated law faculty member at Columbia University. He is a specialist in law, labor and contract economics, with a focus on how incentives are designed to take into account the complex interplay between reputation effects, market competition, and social norms. Current projects include incentives and school choice, the economics of contract and tort law, the economics of performance pay, and the economics of physician diagnostic choice.
Bentley is the 1st Vice-President of the Society of Institutional and Organizational Economics and will serve as president in 2017. He is the recipient of the 2002 H. Gregg Lewis prize awarded by the Society of Labor Economists for his article, “Worker Cooperation and the Ratchet” (with H. Lorne Carmichael), and is a fellow of the Econometric Society. His teaching career began with a two-year stint teaching mathematics and physics at Okundi Secondary School in Nigeria. After completing his Ph.D. in economics, he has taught at Queen's University, Université de Montréal, Boston College, University of Southern California, California Institute of Technology and Princeton University, before coming to Columbia. He has held one-year visiting positions at CORE, Belgium, IAE, Barcelona, Russell Sage Foundation, New York and The Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.
