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From 1991 to 2004 he held U.S. university professorships with teaching responsibilities in Public Policy, Political Science, and Economics, specializing in value measurement techniques for the difficult area of income redistribution programs.
Beginning in 2001, he began applying these value measurement techniques to another difficult area, the economies generated within online video games or "synthetic worlds". Edward's eureka moment came when he discovered that these economies had already become huge. His initial paper reporting these findings, "Virtual Worlds", continues to be one of the most influential works of economics on the net, with over 30,000 downloads at the Social Science Research Network as of May 2005. In 2003, Edward co-founded Terra Nova, a weblog about synthetic worlds, and wrote The Right to Play, arguing for special legal treatment of synthetic worlds. His book, Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, is expected from University of Chicago Press in Fall 2005. Edward also consults regularly on the implications of synthetic worlds with leaders in business, government, education, and software design. Edward is married and has a son. He was born as Edward Bird but changed his last name at his marriage on December 31, 2000. His hobbies include games of all kinds, and theater:
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Graphic Facilitation by Peter Durand | Pop!Tech Official Site |
Edward Castronova is an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the department. Edward obtained a BS in International Affairs from Georgetown University in 1985 and a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. During his studies he also spent several years at research institutes in Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Berlin. 