Andrew Michael Spence is a professor of economics at the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the analysis of markets with asymmetric information. He received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association awarded to economists under 40.

Michael Spence has been very influential with his job-market signaling model. His current research focuses on economic policy in emerging markets, the economics of information, and the impact of leadership on economic growth. He was chairman of the independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006 - 2010), a global policy group focused on strategies for producing rapid and sustainable economic growth, and reducing poverty.

Michael Spence earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972, a B.A./M.A. from Oxford University in 1968 and a B.A. from Princeton University in 1966.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/spence-lecture.html

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/a-michael-spence

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