John List

Kenneth G. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor

Department of Economics

Bio

John A. List is and the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, Founder and Co-Director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, and the first Chief Economist at Walmart.

Recognized as a pioneer for his innovative use of field experiments to examine issues in micro- and macro-economics, List has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several books, including best-sellers, The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life (with Uri Gneezy) and The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale.

List was named a Top 50 Innovator in the Non-Profit Times for 2015 and 2016 for his work on charitable giving. He served in the White House on the Council of Economic Advisers from 2002-2003 and is presently a Research Associate at the NBER, a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor, and a University Fellow at Resources for the Future.

List received his B.S. in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Ph.D. in economics at the University of Wyoming. List joined the UChicago faculty in 2005, and served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2012-2018, and is the former Chief Economist of Uber and Lyft

Selected Publications

List, John A., Anya Samek, and Dana Suskind. “Combining Behavioral Economics and
Field Experiments to Reimagine Early Childhood Education,” Behavioral Public Policy,
forthcoming.

Levitt, Steven, John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff, “The Behavioralist
Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance”,
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, (2016), 8(4), 183-219.

List, John A.; and Samak, Anya C, “The behavioralist as nutritionist: Leveraging
behavioral economics to improve child food choice and consumption,” Journal of Health
Economics, (2015), Volume: 39, pp. 135-146.

Cowell, Jason, Anya Samek, John A. List and Jean Decety. “The Curious Relation Between Theory of Mind and Sharing in Preschool Age Children,” PLoS ONE (2015), 10(2), e.

List, John A. “Using Field Experiments to Change the Template of How We Teach
Economics ,” Journal of Economic Education, (2014) Volume: 45 Issue: 2, pp. 81-89.

Hoffman Moshe; Gneezy Uri; List John A, “Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, (2011), 108(36), pp. 14786-14788

List, John A. and Imran Rasul, “Field Experiments in Labor Economics,” in Handbook of
Labour Economics, eds. Orley Ashenfelter and David Card, (2010), 4A, pp. 103-228.

CV

Click here to download a copy of John List’s CV.