The MSU Department of Economics is pleased to announce that Graduate Director of Admissions and Professor Hanzhe Zhang has been awarded the Interim Mark A. Simon Distinguished Associate Professorship for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 academic years. In addition to the title, Professor Zhang will receive funds to support his research.
Zhang has been with the MSU Department of Economics since 2015. He is an applied microeconomic theorist whose research spans a wide range of topics such as matching (with applications to labor economics and family economics), bargaining, auctions, evolutionary and psychological game theory, team interactions, sustainability, and applied machine learning. He seeks to test his theories empirically and experimentally and apply them in interdisciplinary and classroom settings.
His research at MSU has been published in leading economics journals such as Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, and leading interdisciplinary journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Sustainable Cities and Society. His work has been financially supported by leading public and private entities such as National Science Foundation, Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo. He has recently started serving as a co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics.
“I am deeply honored to receive the Interim Mark A. Simon Distinguished Associate Professorship. This support will enable me to push forward my work in theory, empirics, experiments, and interdisciplinary applications. I look forward to continuing to collaborate with my students and colleagues, and to making meaningful contributions to our department, to the economics profession, and to society,” said Zhang.
“Hanzhe's contributions to the economics profession and our department have been truly remarkable and he is well deserving of these honors,” said Professor Scott Imberman, chair of the department. “He has shown a passion for both research and teaching not just through his writings and classroom experience, but also through his extensive mentoring of both undergraduate and graduate student researchers. All of us are very lucky to have him as our colleague.”
The fellowship was established by Mark A. Simon, an MSU Economics alumnus who graduated from MSU in 1970. He went on to complete his MBA at the Wharton Business School and went on to work in various executive roles in finance. Simon was passionate about MSU, “the school he loved most” and upon his passing in 2022 established this professorship through his estate to “help educate scholars in the field of economics.”
*Quoted information from Mark Simon’s obituary.
By Katie Frey