Liad Wagman is Dean of the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Professor of Economics, and Academic Affiliate at the International Center for Law and Economics. Previously, he was Dean, Professor of Economics, and the John and Mae Calamos Dean Endowed Chair at the Stuart School of Business at Illinois Institute of Technology, with an affiliate professor appointment at Illinois Tech’s Lewis College of Science and Letters. Wagman had previously been Senior Economic and Technology Advisor of the United States Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning, Competition Fellow at the Data Catalyst Institute, a Visiting Associate Professor of Executive Education and Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a Visiting Scholar at the Duke University Economics Department, a research fellow at the Duke University Computer Science Department, a research fellow at the Duke University Social Sciences Research Institute, and worked at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the Program for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences Fellowship, a recipient of the Education and Research Initiative Award, a recipient of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers Best Paper Award, a recipient of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Outstanding Paper Award, and a recipient of the Antitrust Writing Award.

As part of his role at the Federal Trade Commission, Wagman led a large study under two White House Administrations, covering over 1,000 mergers and acquisitions, that required Alphabet Inc. (“Alphabet,” including Google), Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”), Apple Inc. (“Apple”), Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook,” now “Meta”), and Microsoft Corp. (“Microsoft”) to provide information and documents on the terms, scope, structure, and purpose of the acquisitions that each company consummated between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2019, for which the company did not file a merger notification form. The study’s aim was to improve the government’s understanding of large technology firms’ acquisition activity, including pre-acquisition due diligence, post-acquisition technology integration, the movement of human capital in technology, examining the trends in acquisitions, and the structure of deals. Among other contributions, Wagman was the lead author of the United States contribution to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on consumer data rights and competition.

Wagman works on topics at the interface of business and technology in the areas of information economics, industrial organization, law and economics, and entrepreneurship, studying issues concerning market competition and antitrust, data utilization and privacy, innovation, and new venture financing. He is a recipient of the Sigma Xi Excellence in Research Award, the Bauer Family University Excellence in Teaching Award, the Yahoo Faculty Research and Engagement Award, and has been selected into Poet & Quants 2015 Top 40 Business School Faculty Under 40. He has served as an expert witness in major policy litigations, provided federal testimony, amicus briefs and consultations to Fortune 500 companies, as well as collaborated with and advised both startups and large private sector firms, think tanks, governments, and non-government organizations. Wagman’s work is published in academic journals across business-related disciplines, including in economics, finance, law, operations research, and marketing.