Professor Emeritus of Economics Daniel Friedman was among 18 esteemed economists in the inaugural class of fellows of the Economic Science Association (ESA). The group includes two Nobel laureates. The new fellow designation, launched in 2024, recognizes the lifetime contributions of ESA members who have advanced the frontier of knowledge in economics through the use of laboratory and field experiments.
Friedman joined the UCSC Economics faculty in 1985 after teaching at UCLA and UC Berkeley. He is a former chair of the UCSC Economics Department and founded the Learning and Experimental Economics Projects (LEEPS) lab, which conducts laboratory experiments in economics with paid human subjects.
Friedman has broad research interests in applied economic theory, with emphasis on learning and evolution, laboratory experiments, and financial markets. He is the coauthor of five academic books, fourteen NSF grants, and roughly 100 research articles. His most recent research interests have included financial market design, strategic behavior in real time, and evolutionary dynamics of continuous strategies or traits. He retired from UC Santa Cruz in 2020 but still teaches part time at the University of Essex.
His new designation as an ESA fellow is intended as a permanent recognition of his contribution to experimental science and to economics. The ESA was first established in 1986 as a society organized to promote experimental methods in economics. Experiments have since become well established as a mainstream economic methodology.
