Research Affiliates 2017-18: Biographical Sketches

Robert Gibbons is Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and professor in MIT’s department of economics. His research and teaching concern the design and performance of organized activities, especially “relational contracts” (informal agreements so rooted in the parties’ circumstances that they cannot be adjudicated by courts). Organized activities may occur not only within firms, but also between firms (e.g., supply relationships, alliances, joint ventures) or beyond firms (e.g., hospitals, schools, government agencies).

Since 2002, Gibbons has been co-principal investigator of MIT Sloan’s Program on Innovation in Markets and Organizations and founding director of the working group in organizational economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was co-editor (with John Roberts) of The Handbook of Organizational Economics (Princeton University Press, 2013) and a board member of the Citicorp Behavioral Science Research Council and of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Since 2016, Gibbons and Woody Powell (Stanford University) have co-run a summer institute at CASBS on organizations and their effectiveness. As research affiliates in 2017-18, they will engage interested fellows with summer scholars who return for short stints at CASBS. Gibbons was a CASBS fellow in 1994-95 and 2014-15.

Roberta Katz, a senior research scholar at CASBS, coordinates an interdisciplinary set of scholars who are examining the cultural norms and values of those born during and after the mid-1990s, an age group that has been denominated “Generation Z.”  The research will look closely at the traits that define the Generation Z culture, both in and outside the United States, and at the historical trends that have influenced the enculturation of members of this group.

Katz holds a PhD in anthropology as well as a law degree, and was previously the General Counsel of McCaw Cellular Corporation (now AT&T Wireless) and then of Netscape Corporation. For the past thirteen years, she has served under Stanford University Presidents John Hennessy and Marc Tessier-Lavigne as the associate vice president for strategic planning at Stanford. She also served as President Tessier-Lavigne’s interim chief of staff until early 2017. Katz has been deeply involved in the facilitation of a variety of interdisciplinary research initiatives at Stanford, and she is a current member of the CASBS board of directors.

Arnold Milstein is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and directs the University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center. The Center engages faculty from health, computer, and social sciences in the discovery and replication of innovative health care delivery methods that safely lower per capita health care spending for excellent care.

Before joining Stanford’s faculty, his career of applied research spanned private and public sector healthcare delivery and policy. After creating a healthcare performance improvement firm that he expanded globally following its acquisition by Mercer, he co-founded three nationally influential public benefit initiatives, the Leapfrog Group in partnership with the Business Roundtable in 1998, and the Consumer Purchaser Alliance in 2001. Appointed to consecutive term as a Congressional MedPAC Commissioner, he originated two subsequently enacted legislative changes to improve the value of healthcare. He was a founding staff member and serves as the Medical Director of the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), the largest employer-led regional healthcare improvement coalition in the U.S.

Citing his national impact on innovation in health care policy and delivery methods, he was selected for the highest annual award of both the National Business Group on Health (NBGH) and of the American College of Medical Quality. Elected to the Institute of Medicine (now, NAM) of the National Academy of Sciences, he chaired the planning committee of its workshop series on best methods to lower per capita health care spending and improve clinical outcomes. He was educated at Harvard University (BA in economics), Tufts University (MD) and the University of California, Berkeley (MPH in Healthcare Evaluation).

Noelle Stout will study the human impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, focusing on questions of worker displacement and the implicit gendered dynamics of automation and robotics. Collaborating on the CASBS Catalyst research network, Stout will help to bring together scholars, industry professionals, and community stakeholders in the Silicon Valley to probe the groundbreaking potential, as well as the pitfalls, of rapidly developing AI technologies.

Stout’s ongoing research focuses on the interplay of major economic transformations and the micropolitics of daily life. Her forthcoming book, Dispossessed: How Predatory Bureaucracy Foreclosed on the American Middle Class (UC Press) traces the pernicious afterlife of the 2008 mortgage crash. Stout’s previous research analyzed the cultural consequences of introducing market-based tourism to Cuba, resulting in an award-winning book, After Love: Queer Intimacy and Erotic Economies in Post-Soviet Cuba (Duke, 2014) and a prize-winning documentary Luchando (2008), which has circulated internationally.

Stout is an associate professor of anthropology at New York University. Her research has won support from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Furman Center for Real Estate and Public Policy, among others. She earned her BAS and MA in anthropology and feminist studies from Stanford University and a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University. In 2016-17 Stout was a fellow at CASBS.