Michael J. Mazzeo
Economist
Expertise:
Economics, Statistical Analysis
Experience:
For more than a decade, Jim was a daily newspaper reporter and previously served on the California Community College Chancellor’s Economic Development Program Advisory Council and the Chancellor’s Task Force on Workforce, Job Creation and a Strong Economy. In 2021, Jim received the National Public Service Award presented by the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Society for Public Administration. He is the 2020 recipient of the Ross Clayton Lifetime Distinguished Public Service Award presented by the Sacramento Chapter of ASPA. He is the 2019 recipient of the California Steward Leader Award. He has a bachelor’s in journalism from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; a master’s in public policy from Sacramento State University; and was a mid-career fellow at the University of Michigan. He is a director of the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. He is a member of the executive committee and chairs the Groundwater Management Task Force for the Northern California Water Association.
Education:
PhD in Economics, Stanford
About
Mike Mazzeo is an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Mazzeo joined the Kellogg faculty in 1998, after receiving a PhD in Economics from Stanford, and earned tenure at Kellogg in 2005. His teaching responsibilities at Kellogg include the school’s core offering in Business Strategy, a fundamental introduction to management that applies economics reasoning to firm decision making. The course is taken by all Kellogg MBA students in the first term of their first year. Mazzeo is a three-time recipient of Kellogg’s Chairs’ Core Teaching, in recognition of outstanding instruction in that course. In addition, he has also taught Competitive Strategy to more senior managers in the Kellogg’s Executive Education programs.
Mazzeo’s research focuses product differentiation strategy – the relationship between firms’ product positioning choices, market structure, and the competition among businesses. This research is applied and Mazzeo has developed new econometric modeling techniques to empirically examine the interaction among firm entry, product quality choice, and price competition. He has applied these frontier techniques in industry studies of airlines, banking, consumer product goods, franchising, health care, lodging, retail, and telecommunications. In many of these industries, Mazzeo has found strong evidence that links increased levels of industry differentiation with reduced competition among firms, making product choice a critical factor in firms’ profitability. As a consequence, the incentive to avoid price competition dictates which firms enter particular markets and the types of products they choose to offer.