203.432.5969

Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship & Director of the Program on Social Enterprise

Sharon Oster served as dean of the Yale School of Management from 2008 to 2011. She is a specialist in competitive strategy, microeconomic theory, industrial organization, the economics of regulation and antitrust, and nonprofit strategy. She has written extensively on the regulation of business and competitive strategy. Professor Oster's book, Modern Competitive Analysis, used widely at management schools, integrates a broad range of views in its analysis of management strategy and emphasizes an economic approach to strategic planning. Her second book, Strategic Management for Nonprofit Organizations, takes the same economic approach to managing nonprofit organizations. Professor Oster has consulted widely to private, public, and nonprofit organizations.

Consultancies
Microsoft
Boston Scientific

Boards
Corporate:
Health Care REIT
Nonprofit:
Choate Rosemary Hall
Yale University Press

Selected Books
Generating and Sustaining Nonprofit Earned Income: A Guide to Successful Enterprise Strategies (with C.W. Massarsky, S.L. Beinhacker, and B. Bradley), Jossey-Bass, 2004

Strategic Management for Nonprofit Organizations, Oxford University Press, 1995

Modern Competitive Analysis, Oxford University Press, 1990, Third Edition, 1999

Selected Articles
"Behavioral Biases Meet the Market: The Case of Magazine Subscription Prices" (with F. Scott-Morton), Berkeley Electronic Journal Advances in Economic Analysis and Policy: Vol: 5, No.1, 2005

"Does the Structure and Composition of the Board Matter?" (with K. O'Regan), Journal of Law, Economics and Organizations, 2005

"The Effect of University Endowment Growth on Giving: Is There Evidence of Crowding Out?," New Directions for Institutional Research, Fall, 2003

"Does Governance Matter: The Case of Art Museums" (with W. Goetzmann), in Edward Glaeser, ed., The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations, University of Chicago Press, 2003

"Does Government Funding Alter Nonprofit Governance? Evidence from New York City Nonprofit Contractors" (with K. O'Regan), Journal of Policy and Management, Summer, 2002

"Tools or Toys: The Impact of Technology on Scholarly Production" (with D. Hamermesh), Economic Inquiry, July, 2002

"Is There a Future in Firm Diversity?," Advances in Strategic Management, 2000

"The Research Productivity of Economists" (with D. Hamermesh), Review of Economics and Statistics, 1997

"Nonprofit Franchises and Their Local Affiliates," Journal of Economic Behavior of Organizations, 1996

"Exclusive Licensing in a Sequence of Innovations," Journal of Economics and Business, Summer, 1995

Working Papers
"Governance Practices Among Nonprofit Organizations Contracting with New York City"

Education
PhD Harvard University, 1974
BA Hofstra College, 1970