Michal Bauer, Filip Matejka, Michal Pakos and Jakub Steiner have all recently accepted offers to join the CERGE-EI faculty.  Each is outstanding in unique ways. Each brings a different set of attributes to his new positions and has pursued a different path toward an academic career. To introduce our new professors, we are interviewing them over the next several weeks to explore the most interesting aspects of their research, teaching and work experience.

JAKUB STEINER:  ECONOMIC AGENTS EXPLORING REALITY

A native of Prague, Jakub Steiner holds a Masters degree in Physics from Charles University (2000) and a PhD in Economics from CERGE-EI (2006).  His first academic appointment was assistant professor at the University of Edinburgh.  From there, he was hired as an Assistant Professor by the prestigious Kellogg School of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA in September 2009.

So why did you decide to choose an academic career as opposed to business, politics etc?
Partially, family inertia.  Academics is my family background. Partially it was personality:  Business and politics require much more strategic interaction. And, in the final analysis, because I am naturally curious.

Prior to entering CERGE-EI you were a social worker for a Roma community in 2000-2002. What impact did this experience have on you?
I believe the social work with Roma got me into economics. I realized that I wanted to understand some of the problems I encountered so I decided to study a social science. And since I had a Math background, economics was a natural choice.
Although I haven’t done any academic research directly connected to my Roma experience, on a more abstract level it was a great inspiration. The different lifestyle of Roma led me to think about coordination problems, which is now my main research topic.
During my PhD, I also did some consulting for Czech government on Roma issues, and it was very satisfactory to combine my personal experience with the new stuff I was being taught at CERGE-EI.

Was this why you decided to switch from physics to economics?
Frankly, I had become bored with all the electrons, following their orbitals. The golden age of physics was in the 1920s, while the huge development in economics is much more recent. It’s way easier to find manageable original research questions in economics. And it’s much better paid, although I didn’t understand that as a student.

Did your physics background help you in economics? With research ideas?
It gave me the math background, and an intuitive understanding of modeling. Although it didn’t give me research ideas in economics, it equipped me with its lingua franca. Unlike my schoolmates who were economics undergrads, when I first began to study economics, I had no idea even what supply and demand meant, but I could follow the equations on the blackboard.

Are there features that distinguish CERGE-EI from other places you have previously studied or worked?
CERGE-EI is still a new institution with all the pluses and minuses that come with that. From the perspective of being a student, having the main focus on the PhD program is very unusual and a huge bonus. Many departments view their PhD programs as an intellectual luxury that they can afford only after all other missions have been accomplished. At CERGE-EI, PhD education is the main mission. My impression is that CERGE-EI’s main commitment is striving to improve both academic excellence and relevance. Success on both frontiers is a very valuable combination.

Another unique opportunity for CERGE-EI students is mobility. Did you go on mobility?  How important is it for PhD students in general?
I spent few months at LSE in my fourth year. I planned my visit well and it was worth the effort. I gave a talk at their PhD student seminar series and regular talks at PSE in Paris and in Edinburgh.  The latter then led to my first academic job. I also taught finance tutorials at LSE, which was a nice way to earn some money, interact with the faculty and students, and even learn some finance. I also started a research project with Amil Dasgupta, who was my host at LSE.

Although the above activities were helpful, mobility experiences need to be planned very carefully. It is not easy to integrate into busy top places within the time span of few months as a visiting PhD student. This means asking your professors to use their contacts to help you in advance, as well as getting in touch with the people you want to work with on your own and introducing yourself.

Now that you are a professor, how do you balance the “big three:” teaching, research, and service (administrative duties and advising) with your personal interests?
My teaching loads have been quite light so far, and the administrative duties were almost nonexistent in my junior positions so I could concentrate mostly on research. My next academic year will be transitional. I will still be employed by Northwestern, although I will be in Prague most of the time. My full integration into CERGE-EI in terms of teaching and other duties will start in the academic year 2012/13.

What do you enjoy and find most challenging about teaching?
I really enjoy teaching. I get an adrenaline burst from standing in front of a smart class being tested by their questions. And I get to learn something new with each course I prepare.

Do you prefer to treat students as colleagues, or to keep them at some distance?
I haven’t taught PhD classes before, so I will have to find a new balance. I tremendously value my experience with my CERGE-EI advisor Avner Shaked. Our relationship had elements of both models you mentioned, with some flavor of wizard and his apprentice as well.

What role does advising play in an academic career, and how would you suggest students choose advisors?
I don’t think I’m old enough to give such broad advice, but let me try my best. Perhaps the most important and difficult step is to figure out what the student wants to achieve. There are many topics and facets of economics that can be satisfying ranging from publishing abstract papers to improving the quality of local public debate. The choice of the advisor should be easy once the student figures out his/her goals.

Turning to research, having completed your PhD in at CERGE-EI in 2006, what was your dissertation topic? Tell us about the key results of your work?
My thesis was on coordination games. Living amid the experience of a transition country, I was interested in how and when the society can flip from one equilibrium to another. I worked in an area of game theory that tries to answer such questions focusing on the informational aspect of coordination problems – each economic agent knows his/her own part of reality and has to predict what other agents know when he/she is trying to coordinate with them. My thesis applied this modeling framework to business cycles or globalization

What is the current focus of your research efforts?
I have five fairly developed research projects at the moments, some ongoing from as long ago as 2006. Four papers are on coordination, a topic I am probably going to leave for some time once I get the existing papers published. The fifth one is a new research area. It’s about the fragility of high frequency markets arising in the presence of bounded rationality. Working on a new topic has been very refreshing, and I hope to diversify my research portfolio in the near future.

Your have published in journals such as the Journal of Economic Theory, Theoretical Economics, and Games and Economic Behavior.  What aspects make a paper a successful paper?
I don’t have a secret recipe.  If I had one I would have published more papers. Instead, let me tell you something else. I submitted the JET and the GEB papers during my CERGE-EI studies, and I was concerned that I would be discriminated against, based on my student status and affiliation. The papers eventually got accepted, so I encourage students to try as well. Top field journals are proper targets for the best CERGE-EI students. They provide a good ratio of the realistic chance of acceptance and of the signaling value for the job market.

Which type of research activity – individual or cooperative – do you prefer? Are you going to involve students in your research activity? If yes, what type of assistance do you need?
I hope and believe that I will talk a lot with CERGE-EI students. I hope to supervise and eventually coauthor as well. And I would appreciate a mathematically skilled TA who would be willing to check my proofs.

Could you share some hints with current students on how to be successful in academic career?
I have no secret recipe for successful academic career, and the term itself is very relative. But let me share what has made my research more enjoyable. Try to find co-authors. Research can become a very lonely activity, and having an enthusiastic co-author will keep your spirits high. I met my main co-author, Colin Stewart at a summer school. Colin was a top theory student from Yale at that time, so I was quite shy to propose cooperating with him, but it has worked out. CERGE-EI students should try to attend good summer schools, and search for enthusiastic collaborators. After all, the only risk is to be turned down.

Tetyana Holets, 2nd year student