Eli Noam


Eli M. Noam is a professor of Finance and Economics at the Columbia Business School, and holds the Paul Garrett Chair in Public Policy and Business Responsibility. He is the director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. He works on the economics, management, and policy of media and the digital world, most recently on global media ownership and on next-generation “Cloud-TV”. He has written over 400 articles and has authored, edited, and co-edited over 30 books.

Education

Noam attended Harvard University, where he obtained several degrees, including an A.B. 1970, an A.M. 1972, a J.D. 1975 and a Ph.D. in Economics 1975. His dissertation advisors were Martin Feldstein and Thomas Schelling.

Military service

Noam served in the Israel Air Force during the Six-Day War in 1967 and the October War in 1973. He also serves with the Civil Air Patrol as a 1st Lt., Mission Pilot for Search and Rescue in the New York Wing, Phoenix Squadron.

Career

Noam began working as a professor at Columbia Business School in 1976. He took leave to serve a 3-year stint as Commissioner of the New York Public Service Commission, where he took a lead role on issues of local telecom competition, universal service, privacy, and network upgrades. He has also taught at Columbia Law School, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Swiss universities of Fribourg and St. Gallen. He is active in the development of electronic distance education. Noam serves as the Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. CITI is a university-based research center focusing on management and policy in telecommunications, Internet, and electronic mass media. Noam also initiated the MBA concentration in the Management of Media, Communications, and Information at the Business School. Noam's articles and books are on subjects such as communications, information, public choice, public finance, and general regulation.1 He was President of the International Media Management Academic Association, 2013-2015.

Honors

Noam has received honorary doctorates from the University of Munich and the University of Marseilles.

Other activities

Noam was a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, a White House appointment, from 2003-2005. He was a regular columnist for the Financial Times online edition. Noam has been a member of advisory boards for the Federal government's telecommunications network, of the IRS computer system modernization, the National Commission on the Status of Women in Computing, the NY Governor's Task Force on New Media, and of the Intek Corporation. He is Chairman of the Nexus Mundi Foundation, and served on boards of the Oxford Internet Institute, Jones International University, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Minority Media Council, and on several committees of the National Research Council. He was on the Faculty Steering Committee of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the research advisory board of the New York City Police Department, the Mass Media committee of the ACLU, and the Consumer Telecommmunications Information Project of the United Church of Christ. He served on scientific advisory boards for the governments of Ireland and Sweden, and for Orange. He is a member of the Columbia University Senate, representing his faculty's tenured professors. Noam has been a participant member of the World Economic Forum and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a licensed radio amateur advanced class, and a commercially rated and active pilot. He holds a US patent on a smart packet/e-wallet system.

Personal life

Noam is married to Nadine Strossen, the former National President of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Select publications

Books (authored, edited, or co-edited)

In Japanese