Michael Ostrovsky is the Fred H. Merrill Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Topsort, a venture-backed start-up that provides auction-based infrastructure and advertising solutions for online retailers and marketplaces. Michael's research is in the areas of game theory, marketplace design, auction theory and practice, two-sided matching, industrial organization, and e-commerce platforms. Michael’s research on the properties of internet advertising auctions has served as a foundation for the large and growing literature on the subject, and has been recognized with the 2013 Prize of the Game Theory Society for “the best paper at the interface of game theory and computer science in the last decade” and the 2018 Test of Time Award of the ACM Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation for “an influential paper that has significantly impacted research or applications exemplifying the interplay of economics and computation,” among other awards.

Following his initial academic work on advertising auctions, Michael has advised Yahoo on the design of various aspects of their sponsored search and display ad auctions. Most notably, he has consulted Yahoo on the determination of optimal reserve prices in sponsored search auctions, which resulted in a substantial long-term increase in Yahoo’s revenues. During the academic year of 2013 – 2014, Michael was a Visiting Scientist at Google, working on a number of marketplace design projects. He has also advised LinkedIn and Pinterest on various aspects of their monetization and advertising auction strategies and designs. In addition to his work with Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, Michael has also advised a number of international telecommunications companies on their bidding strategies in complex auctions for the electromagnetic spectrum, and also worked as an expert advisor on legal cases involving online advertising and antitrust-related issues.

Michael has earned a B.A.S. in Mathematics and Economics from Stanford University and an A.M. in Economics and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University.

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