A professor profile...
Marzena Rostek
After attending only two lectures of Professor Rostek’s Game Theory class, I decided to drop it. Don’t get me wrong, her teaching methods, apparent from day one, are engaging, enlightening and interesting to say the least. However, I was simply overwhelmed with fear of competing with the students in class, and quite honestly, there were one too many math and economics double majors in that lecture hall. According to student ratings, Game Theory is deemed to be one of the most difficult advanced economics elective offered at UW-Madison. Also according to student ratings, Professor Rostek is one of the best lecturers to take up this challenging class with. Luckily, I had the pleasure of engaging in an insightful and inspiring conversation with Professor Marzena Rostek. Marzena Rostek is currently a Professor of Economics at UW-Madison. Her passion for this subject is evident through her extensive research on related topics such as Market Design, Microeconomic theory, and Finance. Her multi-faceted papers tackle the behavioral aspect of decision making and integrate the complex mathematics and econometrics required to explain such behavior. Presently, she is working with Semyon Malamud, a Swiss Finance Institute Associate Professor at Lausanne, to prove that there is an efficiency based argument for decentralized markets. “This is one of the most exciting projects I have worked on”, says Professor Rostek. This excitement, coupled with her passion for human interactions in markets, is manifested through the answers she has provided during the interview. Needless to say, I have come to regret dropping a wonderful opportunity of expanding my knowledge and pushing my limits with the guidance of such an intelligent woman.
Written by Razan Aldagher