Biography

Ian Ayres is a lawyer and an economist. He is the William K. Townsend Professor of Law and Anne Urowsky Professorial Fellow in Law at Yale Law School and a Professor at Yale's School of Management. He is the editor of the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. Professor Ayres is a regular commentator on public radio’s Marketplace and a columnist for Forbes magazine and regularly writes opeds for The New York Times. He was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, received his B.A. (majoring in Russian studies and economics) and J.D. from Yale and his Ph.D in economics from M.I.T. Professor Ayres clerked for the Honorable James K. Logan of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has previously taught at Illinois, Northwestern, Stanford, and Virginia law schools and has been a research fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Professor Ayres has published eight books and over 100 articles on a wide range of topics. In spring 2005, he published three books, Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights (Princeton University Press 2005) (with Jennifer Gerarda Brown); Optional Law: The Structure of Legal Entitlements (University of Chicago Press 2005); and Insincere Promises: The Law of Misrepresented Intent (Yale University Press 2005) (with Gregory Klass). He is also the author of Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small (2003) (with Barry Nalebuff); Voting with Dollars: A New Paradigm for Campaign Finance (2002) (with Bruce Ackerman) and Pervasive Prejudice?: Non-Traditional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination (2001). Professor Ayres has been ranked as one of the most prolific and most-cited law professors of his generation. See James Lindgren & Daniel Seltzer, The Most Prolific Law Professors and Faculties, 71 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 781 (1996); Fred R. Shapiro, The Most-Cited Legal Scholars, 29 J. LEGAL STUD. 409 (2000). Excerpts of his publications as well as audio and video clips can be found on the Internet at: www.law.yale.edu/ayres/.