Andrew Weiss (economist)

Early Years and Education

Weiss was born in New York in 1947. He graduated with Honors from Williams College in 1968 with a BA in Political Economy. In 1977, he received his PhD in Economics from Stanford University.

Academic career

Weiss began his career in 1976 as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University, as well as a Research Economist in the Mathematics Center at Bell Laboratories. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank and the United States National Research Council, the research arm of the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 1989, Weiss was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Weiss is the author of 49 published papers and the book, Efficiency Wages: Models of Unemployment, Layoffs and Wage Dispersion. The Nobel Prize in Economics to Joseph Stiglitz in 2001 cited Weiss' research with Stiglitz as having had "a substantial impact in the domains of corporate finance, monetary theory and macroeconomics." As of June 2013, Weiss was ranked in the top one percent of published economists by the number of citations to his papers.

Professional career

Andrew Weiss is the Founder and current Chief Executive Officer of Weiss Asset Management, a Boston-based investment firm. Weiss and the investment strategies of Weiss Asset Management have been the subject of numerous U.S. and European newspaper and magazine articles, including features in Forbes, Outstanding Investor Digest, Micropal, and The Motley Fool.

In the Press

During a CNBC program, Michael Metz, the Chief Investment Strategist for Oppenheimer Holdings, proclaimed Weiss to be "one of the most brilliant money managers that I know." Bruce Greenwald, the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia University and author of Value Investing, said of Weiss in an interview with The Motley Fool, "If I had one person to pick and one guy to put the money in, I would pick him." Robert Solow, a Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics and an Institute Professor at MIT, said at a press conference on March 15, 2005 "[Weiss] is a significant person among US economists. I have known him personally for 30 years and I have the highest respect for him." Laurence Kotlikoff, Professor of Economics at Boston University, was quoted in The Boston Globe article Nighmare in Prague as saying Weiss is "a brilliant economist, and he’s an outstanding investor. He's scrupulously honest, and I'd trust him with anything".

Other Involvements

In addition to his professional and academic activities, Weiss currently serves on the Advisory Board for The Center of Development Economics at Williams College, and the Advisory Board for The Center for Effective Global Action (at UC Berkeley). Additionally, Weiss is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the Council on Foreign Relations as well as a former board member of the American Jewish World Service and a co-founder of Child Relief International.

Personal life

Weiss lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife Bonnie. They have three daughters.