The In Your Face Economist

The Army Corps of Engineers in Anchorage, Alaska, never had a draftee like Jerry A. Hausman. Fresh out of Brown University in 1968, summa cum laude in economic history, Hausman had a rare ability to apply math and statistics to real-world problems. He wrote a computer program to calculate the necessary height of breakwaters for Native American fishing villages. He sniffed out bottlenecks in the Army's phone network. At night, in his spare time, he created software to help oil companies plan bids on oil leases on Alaska's North Slope.

Nearly 30 years later, Hausman is as much a problem-solver as ever. He is among the leading microeconomists of his generation, an endowed professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who in 1985 won the John Bates Clark award as the best American economist under age 40. He may also be corporate America's favorite economist--one whose clients have included Microsoft, Kimberly-Clark, Anheuser-Busch, Eastman Kodak, the Baby Bells, and Staples (table). His consulting firm, Cambridge Economics Inc., employs 10 people.