Pat Bajari (1969-2025)

 Pat Bajari has died at 55.  As Amazon's chief economist from 2010-2023, he oversaw a revolution in the labor market for economists, making Amazon at least for a time the leading employer of new PhD economists, and firmly establishing them among Amazon's many product lines.

He also taught at Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Michigan, Minnesota and U. of Washington.

There are a whole lot of moving tributes to him at the memorial Kudaboard: Celebrating Pat Bajari. He apparently touched a lot of lives.

 Here's an old CNN story:

 Amazon gets an edge with its secret squad of PhD economists 
By Lydia DePillis, CNN Business, Wed March 13, 2019

"In the past few years, Amazon has hired more than 150 PhD economists

...

"The architect of Amazon’s massive team of data crunchers is Pat Bajari

...

"At other companies, economists are often clustered in a small team, but at Amazon, they are integrated into many teams across the company. In a glossy recruiting brochure, Amazon describes how its economists help build risk models for lending to third-party sellers, advise on product design and engagement tracking for devices like Alexa and Kindle, help target customers for its booming cloud services business, and forecast server capacity needs for the consumer website."

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Here's the obit from U. Minnesota:

Remembering Patrick L. Bajari (1969-2025),  April 15, 2025

"Pat Bajari, a major figure in the economics profession who was deeply connected to Minnesota Economics, tragically passed away on Monday at age 55 after a battle with cancer. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family.

"Pat was born and raised in Minnesota. He completed both his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, earning BS degrees in Economics and Mathematics in 1992 and his PhD in Economics in 1997. His academic career included faculty positions at Harvard, Stanford, Duke, and Michigan before he returned in 2006 to join the Minnesota faculty. In 2010, he went on leave to become Chief Economist at Amazon, eventually making the move permanent. In Pat’s words, “...when I saw the data wave blowing up in tech, I knew I had to stay and be a part of it. I gave up tenure and dove all in.” He played a transformational role in leading the emergence of tech-economics in industry—one of the major developments in economics in recent years. In 2023, he became Chief Economist at Keystone."