Microsoft Research

Position Title/Short Description

Full Text of JOE Listing:

Microsoft Research is a unique research environment, balancing an open, self-directed and highly interdisciplinary academic lab with the opportunity to engage with business groups and their associated data, collaborators, and experimentation platforms.

Postdoctoral researchers are hired for a one or two-year fixed-term appointment and receive a competitive salary/benefits package and eligible for relocation expenses. There are 1-2 positions open in economics and these require the completion of a Ph.D. in economics or closely related fields before starting at Microsoft Research. However, we also welcome interdisciplinary applications from candidates with some interest in economics but also strong backgrounds in other fields. All positions are based in Cambridge, MA.

Access to Data: Postdoctoral researchers have wide-ranging access to Microsoft data. While certainly not constrained to utilize Microsoft data assets, we expect empirical researchers to benefit greatly from access to data from various Microsoft businesses. In the past research has used data on online advertising auctions, Xbox Live platform, web browsing and internal datasets related to firm and employee behavior.

Interdisciplinary: Permanent researchers include top scholars in anthropology, applied mathematics, biology, communications, computer science, economics, law, machine learning, physics, psychology, sociology and statistics, physics. Postdoctoral researchers in past years have collaborated extensively across disciplinary boundaries with great success and we expect attention to such interdisciplinary research to grow further as economics and computer science become more tightly integrated as fields.

Fields: We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise in auctions and market design, platform economics, industrial organization, personnel economics, social networks analysis, behavioral economics, economics of digitization and e-commerce and applied game theory. However, exceptional candidates in all fields will receive full consideration and interdisciplinary candidates with a background in any of the above-listed interdisciplinary fields are warmly welcomed.

Applicants should apply through JOE by submitting a job market paper, cover letter, CV, statement of research interests, and three letters of recommendation. We prefer to receive applications by mid-November to determine interviews at the AEA meetings in Philadelphia, PA. We will follow the standard process of AEA interview followed by fly-outs for top applicants, though in some cases we may consider interdisciplinary candidates through a process adapted to their field of study.

To learn more about our group and the job openings, please visit: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/microeconomics/

Application Requirements: Job Market Paper, 2 Optional Papers, 3 Letters of Recommendation, CV, Cover Letter (optional), Research Statement (optional)

Application deadline: 12/01/2017

For more information, email: EconPostDoc@Microsoft.com