Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason
Dean of the School of Information 2010-15
Jeffrey MacKie-Mason is one of the founding faculty members of the School of Information, joining the school in 1996 while maintaining his appointments in economics and in public policy. He holds an AB from Dartmouth College, an MA in public policy from the University of Michigan and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He joined the U-M faculty as an assistant professor in 1986 and was promoted to associate professor in 1992 and professor in 1999. He was named the Arthur W. Burks Collegiate Professor of Information and Computer Science in 2000. He served as associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Information from 2008 to 2010 and served as dean from 2010 to 2015.
At UMSI, Dean MacKie-Mason saw the launch of the Master of Health Informatics and Bachelor of Science in Information degrees and graduated the first cohort of MHI recipients. In 2010, UMSI consolidated its two locations in West Hall and North Campus with a move to new quarters in the North Quad building.
He was the founding director of the Program for Research on the Information Economy, later known as Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions at U-M. Funded by more than $6.2 million in NSF grants, the STIET program utilized an incentive-centered design approach to modern information systems to bring together faculty and doctoral students from U-M and Wayne State University in research, training and outreach.
MacKie-Mason is well known for his pioneering work on the economics of the internet. In recent years he focused on developing the area of incentive-centered design for information systems. He also works on the economics of competition in high-technology markets. He was the research director for the first large-scale field experiment on electronic commerce for network access to scholarly journals (PEAK). He has consulted to Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Sun Microsystems, America Online, EDS, Bell Atlantic, Intergraph, GTE and other information technology companies.
His publications appear in scholarly journals in the areas of economics, computer science, operations research and library science, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of his research.
Among his achievements are the U-M Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, 2010; University Partnership Fellow, IBM, 1998-2001; National Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford, 1990-91; Joseph A. Livingston Research Scholar, U-M, 1989-90; and Collegiate Council Fellow, U-M, 1987-88. MacKie-Mason and his wife Janet made a $2.5 million bequest to the school as part of the Victors for Michigan campaign — the largest gift from any school faculty member.
He has consulted and testified on liability, damages and policy issues for antitrust and regulatory matters since the early 1980s. He founded Resource Economics as an antitrust economics firm in 1989 and co-founded applEcon LLC, an antitrust economics partnership, in 2000. His specialties are information and technology industries, with extensive experience in the internet, digital content, e-commerce, computer software and hardware, telecommunications, high-volume copiers and computer services.
In 2015, MacKie-Mason left Michigan for the positions of professor, university librarian and chief digital scholarship officer at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired from UC Berkeley in June 2024 as professor emeritus.
MacKie-Mason retired from U-M with the titles of dean emeritus, professor emeritus of information and computer science, professor emeritus of economics and professor emeritus of public policy.