Ian Ayres - Biography

Biography

Ian Ayres grew up in Kansas City and graduated from the Pembroke-Country Day School in 1977. He played varsity basketball, ran cross country, and served as executive editor of the Hilltop, the high school newspaper. Ayres wrote an op-ed piece his senior year called "Black Like Me" (named for the 1961 book of the same name), a controversial piece detailing the consequences of his checking the "African- American" box for race on his PSAT, which led to consideration for academic awards. Ian Ayres graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1981 from Yale University with a dual degree in Russian Studies and Economics. He then received his J.D. at Yale Law School in 1986, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. Throughout his career, Ayres has been committed to social justice and has been involved in public interest law. In a post-conviction petition, Ayres was successful in vacating the death sentence for his client.

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 Professor at the Yale School of Management. He 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 and as the Editor of the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. Ayres has previously served as a research fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has clerked for the Honorable James K. Logan of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ayres has published 8 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.