Liad Wagman

  • John and Mae Calamos Dean
  • Endowed Chair
  • Professor of Economics
  • Affiliate Professor, Lewis College of Science and Letters

Liad Wagman is the John and Mae Calamos Dean Endowed Chair and professor of economics at Stuart School of Business at Illinois Tech.

Wagman is Academic Affiliate at the International Center for Law and Economics, and was Senior Economic and Technology Advisor of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning, Competition Fellow at the Data Catalyst Institute, a Visiting Associate Professor of Executive Education and Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a Visiting Scholar at the Duke University Economics Department, a research fellow at the Duke University Computer Science Department, a research fellow at the Duke University Social Sciences Research Institute, and worked at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the Program for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences Fellowship, a recipient of the Education and Research Initiative Award, a recipient of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers Best Paper Award, and a recipient of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Outstanding Paper Award.

Under Wagman’s leadership, Illinois Tech’s Stuart School of Business tripled its student body to more than 1,000 students, revamped and enhanced its messaging, underwent a successful AACSB reaccreditation review, significantly grew its industry advisory board, and launched a number of popular STEM-oriented undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs at the interface of business and technology.

As part of his role at the Federal Trade Commission, Wagman led a large study, covering over 1,000 mergers and acquisitions, that required Alphabet Inc. (“Alphabet,” including Google), Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”), Apple Inc. (“Apple”), Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook,” now “Meta”), and Microsoft Corp. (“Microsoft”) to provide information and documents on the terms, scope, structure, and purpose of the acquisitions that each company consummated between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2019, for which the company did not file a merger notification form. The study’s aim was to improve the government’s understanding of large technology firms’ acquisition activity, including examining the trends in acquisitions and the structure of deals. Wagman was also the lead author of the United States contribution to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on consumer data rights and competition.

Wagman works on topics in the areas of information economics, industrial organization, law and economics, and entrepreneurship, studying issues concerning market competition and antitrust, data utilization and privacy, innovation, and new venture financing. He is a recipient of the Sigma Xi Excellence in Research Award, the Bauer Family University Excellence in Teaching Award, the Yahoo Faculty Research and Engagement Award, and has been selected into Poet & Quants 2015 Top 40 Business School Faculty Under 40. He has served as an expert witness in major policy litigations, provided federal testimony, amicus briefs and consultations, as well as collaborated with and advised both startups and large private sector firms, think tanks, governments, and non-government organizations.

His work is published in academic journals in economics, finance, law, operations research, and marketing, including the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Literature, the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Law & Economics, and Marketing Science, and in government reports.

Education

Ph.D., Duke University, Economics
M.A., Duke University, Economics
M.S., Stanford University, Computer Science
B.S., B.A., University of North Carolina, Computer Science and Mathematics

Research Interests

Industrial organization 
Competition and antitrust 
Data privacy 
Entrepreneurship
Innovation

Affiliations

Undergraduate Programs in Business

Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.)

Master of Management

Ph.D. in Finance

Ph.D. in Management Science

M.S. Computational Decision Science and Operations Research (Illinois Tech College of Computing)

Media Appearances