Sharon M. Oster

Sharon M. Oster is Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and Director of the Program on Social Enterprise at the Yale School of Management. She will become Dean of the Yale School of Management November 1, 2008. 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. Her book, Modern Competitive Analysis (1990, 2nd edition 1993, 3rd edition 1999), used in many business 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 (1995), takes the same economic approach to managing nonprofit organizations. She has recently joined fellow economists and educators Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair as a co-author of the widely used introductory economics texts, Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Economics, both currently in their 9th editions.

Oster joined the faculty at the Yale School of Management as Associate Professor of Economics and Management in 1982, and is the first woman to receive tenure at SOM, in 1983. She is also the first recipient of the Yale School of Management Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 1988, and received this recognition a second time in 2008. Since joining the SOM faculty, she has played a leadership role in the growth and development of the school’s economics group. Beginning in 2006, Oster has been one of the key senior faculty members involved in the design and implementation of the Yale School of Management’s innovative integrated MBA curriculum.

Sharon Oster served as Associate Dean of the Yale SOM from 1992 to 1994, and has also served as the Director of the Program on Social Enterprise at the school, which supports work on nonprofit and public organizations, as well as initiatives in the area of corporate social responsibility, since its inception. From 2002 to 2005, Oster was Co-Director of the Yale School of Management-Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Organizations, in cooperation with the Pew Charitable Trusts. This partnership sponsored an annual national business plan competition for nonprofit organizations from 2003 to 2005, and awarded $1.5 million in prizes to 24 nonprofit ventures and over $2 million worth of technical assistance to 60 semi-finalist organizations.

Oster has consulted widely to private, public, and nonprofit organizations, and currently serves on the boards of a number of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, including Health Care REIT, Yale University Press, and Amistad Academy. She is a 1970 graduate of Hofstra College, from which she also received an Honorary Doctorate in 2001. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1974. A long-time resident of New Haven, she is married to fellow Yale economist (and co-author) Ray Fair, and has three grown children.