Whitney K. Newey: Mormon Econometrician

Whitney K. Newey is a professor and an econometrician. He and Kenneth D. West are known for developing the Newey-West estimator, which accurately and impressively estimates the covariance matrix of a regression model when errors are heteroskedastic and autocorrelated. Newey is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Newey was born on July 17, 1954. In 1978, he earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Brigham Young University. He received his PhD, also in economics, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. After his graduation, he became an assistant professor at Princeton University and then five years later, an associate professor. From 1988 to 1990, he was also a member of the technical staff with Bell Communications Research. Beginning in 1990, he became a professor in the economics department of MIT. He became the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics at MIT. He is also chair of the MIT Economics Department (2011–).

He is the author of numerous articles and papers. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. Since 2004, he is also an international fellow at the Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, University College London. In 2000-2001, he was a fellow with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1987 to 1991. He was an honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin. Since 1984, he has regularly received National Science Foundation research grants.

He and his wife, Cheryl, have five children and live in Massachusetts.