First Appointment of Economics Nobel Laureate in Korea Professor Eric Maskin, who was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics, will be teaching at Yonsei as Chair Professor of Economics. The Economics Division of the College of Business and Economics has decided to appoint Professor Eric Maskin of Princeton University as “SK-Yonsei Economics Chair Professor” for one year beginning in September 2009. The contract was signed in September of this year. This is the first time in Korea for an Economics Department to add a Nobel Laureate in Economics to its faculty. Professor Maskin earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. He went on to teach at MIT, Harvard, and Cambridge, and is currently a professor in the Social Sciences division of the Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study. He was co-awarded the Nobel Prize with Professor Roger Myerson (University of Chicago) for their work in combining game theory to the mechanism design theory, a theory developed by Leonid Hurwicz, Regents’ Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Minnesota. His areas of research include the game theory, incentive economics, public choice theory, and economic mechanism design. During his appointment at Yonsei, Professor Maskin will teach game theory to undergraduate students and mechanism design theory to graduate students, giving Yonsei students an opportunity to learn from a current top scholar of the field. Fudenberg, Schmidt, and Other Top Economists to Teach at Yonsei The Economics Division of the Yonsei College of Business and Economics will appoint other top-class scholars as SK Chair Professors in addition to Professor Maskin. These scholars are likely future candidates of the Nobel Prize. In May, SK Networks agreed to provide funding of 1.5 billion won, enabling the Economics Division to invite top international scholars to Yonsei. In Spring 2008, former Editor of Econometrica and current Harvard University Professor, Drew Fudenberg will teach graduate students at Yonsei for one semester as full-time faculty. From Fall 2008, Professor Peter Schmidt of Michigan State University, an international scholar known for his work in econometrics, will hold the SK Chair Professorship for one year. In addition, the Economics Division has recently added many promising young scholars to its faculty. In Fall 2007, Professor Jang Yong Seong of Seoul National University, Professor Sung Tae Yoon of KAIST, Professor No Joung Yeo of Carnegie Mellon University, and Professor Park Ki Young of University of Maryland, Baltimore left their former institutions and came to Yonsei. Professor Jang Yong Seong, who is also affiliated with the University of Rochester, has published ten articles in international journals, including three in American Economic Review, the top journal of the field. Professors Sung Tae Yoon and Park Ki Young are outstanding scholars in macroeconomics, and Professor No Jeong Yeo had already published an article in Econometria while working on her doctorate degree. Next year, Professor Lee Jihong of Birkbeck College, University of London, will join our faculty. Professor Lee was awarded a Ph.D. in microeconomics from the University of Cambridge, and has published in various journals including Journal of Economic Theory and Economic Journal.