Kathryn Graddy

Kathryn Graddy is a professor of economics and the dean of Brandeis International Business School at Brandeis University. She is the Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Professor in Economics at Brandeis University. Her research interests include the economics of art, culture, and industrial organization.

Career Graddy received a BS in mathematics and a BA in Russian language from Tulane University, an MBA from Columbia University, and a PhD in economics from Princeton University. Prior to her position at the University of Oxford, she was appointed as an assistant professor of economics at the London Business School. Afterwards, she was a research fellow at Jesus College and then at Exeter College.

After leaving Oxford, Graddy joined Brandeis University in 2007. In 2013, she was made the Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Professor in Economics. She was named senior associate dean of IBS in 2016, a position she held until she became dean in 2018. She has been widely quoted in the media as an expert on art auctions and investment in art.

Graddy spent a month shadowing a trader at the Fulton Fish Market to analyze competition within fish markets, and published the results in 2006 study finding that traders appeared to charge different prices to different ethnic groups and that perfect competition at the market was not apparent.

In a 2017 paper co-authored with Princeton University economist Carl Lieberman, the two economists concluded that "artists, in the year following the death of a friend or relative, are on average less creative than at other times of their lives." The results were based on an analysis of thirty-three French Impressionist painters and fifteen American artists born between 1910 and 1920. The results, which were featured in the popular press, followed an earlier working paper by Graddy that found that visual artists' creative output suffered during periods of bereavement.

Selected publications