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Arthur J Pais in New York
Do People Mean What They Say? Do CEOs Set Their Own Pay?
These are not the headlines from a psychology or a business magazine. They are the titles of the scholarly papers Sendhil Mullainathan and his colleagues have published in the past seven years.
For over two years Mullainathan has received wide coverage in scholarly journals and reputed publications such as The New York Times for his contributions in various branches of economics, especially in the relatively new branch of behavioral economics.
On Wednesday, the 29-year-old associate professor of economics at MIT was named a MacArthur fellow.
He is the youngest of the 24 fellows named this year by the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation which started the fellowships in 1981. Each will receive $500,000 'genius grant' with 'no strings attached' support over the next five years.
Only a handful of people of South Asian origin including the late poet A K Ramanujan and sarod exponent Ustad Ali Akbar Khan have received the MacArthur genius grants.
The Foundation hailed Mullainathan, who has also presented a paper on media bias, for pushing the boundaries of economics.
'In studies ranging from executive compensation, the economic role of social networking, resource allocation within extended families in developing countries, racial discrimination in the American marketplace, and the limited use of checking accounts by the poor,' the citation said,
'Mullainathan's empirical methodology and theoretical inquiries consistently reveal new perspectives from which to consider traditional questions in economics.'
Winners this year include Brian Tucker, 56, a seismologist applying structural engineering principles to public buildings in some of the world's poorest, most earthquake-prone regions; Pulitzer Prize winner Kathrine Boo, 37, a Washington Post journalist who has reported on the poor and destitute in Washington DC and Dartmouth College Professor Daniela Rus, 39, expert in designing self-reconfigurable robots
The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals from a wide spectrum of fields in America who have shown extraordinary creativity and hold a promise for important advances.
'They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in interdisciplinary work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers,' according to the Foundation.
Mullainathan, who has a doctorate from Harvard, draws from concepts of biology and psychology to interpret empirical economic research. 'Still at the outset of his career, he invigorates the discipline with fresh and unconventional inquiries into important issues,' the citation added.
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