Ian Ayres
Ian Ayres (born 1959) is an American lawyer and economist. Ayres is a professor at the Yale Law School and at the Yale School of Management. Early life and education Ayres grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where they graduated from Pembroke Country Day School in 1977. They played varsity basketball, ran cross country, and served as executive editor of their high school newspaper. Ayres wrote an op-ed piece their senior year called "Black Like Me" (named for the 1961 book of the same name), a controversial piece detailing the consequences of their checking the "African- American" box for race on his PSAT, which led to consideration for academic awards. Ayres graduated summa cum laude in 1981 from Yale University with a dual degree in Russian studies and economics. Ayres then received their J.D. at Yale Law School in 1986, where Ayres was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Ayres received their Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. Career Ayres has taught at Northwestern University School of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations Cardoza Law Institute, the University of Iowa College of Law, the University of Illinois College of Law, Stanford Law School, the University of Toronto Law School, and Yale University. Since 1994, Ayres has served as the William K. Townsend professor at the Yale Law School and is a professor at the Yale School of Management. Ayres teaches antitrust, civil rights, commercial law, contracts, corporations, corporate finance, law and economics, property, and quantitative methods. In 2006, Ayres was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and also currently serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research'. Ayres has previously served as a research fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has clerked for James K. Logan of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a post-conviction petition, Ayres was successful in vacating the death sentence for his client. Ayres has published eight books and over 100 articles in law reviews and magazines on a variety of subjects, and has been ranked as one of the 250 most prolific and most-cited legal scholars of his generation. In 2007, Ayres co-founded StickK, a web startup enabling users to enter commitment contracts to reach personal goals. Ayres currently serves on the Advisory Council of Represent.Us, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization. Controversy In a September 2007 review of Ayres's book Super Crunchers, the New York Times''' David Leonhardt wrote that he "came across two sentences about a doctor in Atlanta that were nearly identical to two sentences I wrote in this newspaper last year." Leonhardt was particularly disturbed that "many readers will surely assume that Ayres witnessed some events" that Ayres did not. On October 4, the Yale Daily News reported that it had found nine passages in the book, some more than a couple paragraphs long, that were identical or similar to those in the Times and four other