Robert Walker

One definition of management is the "judicious use of means to accomplish an end." In this information age, the judicious use of information is among the most important skills available to managers without regard to what they manage. Though in prior times the cost of acquiring information was significant, we are entering (or perhaps are in) an age in which the separation of relevant and irrelevant information is among the hardest and most important tasks facing managers. Statistics, as summaries of large amounts of information, provide a crucial tool for informing quality managerial decisions.

Robert W. Walker, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods in the Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University. Though his Ph.D. is in political science, Professor Walker has taught statistics and research methods to both undergraduate and graduate students at Dartmouth College, Texas A&M University, Washington University in Saint Louis, and Rice University prior to his arrival at Atkinson in addition to courses in political economy. He was a regular instructor in the National Science Foundation's Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models summer program at Washington University in Saint Louis and has regularly taught courses in the analysis of longitudinal data at the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis in the United Kingdom.

His joint work received the Warren Miller Prize for the best published paper in 2009 in Political Analysis, the journal of the Society for Political Methodology and the most cited journal in Political Science during the most recent evaluation period. His published work spans international political economy, political methodology, and the political economy of state and municipal bond markets.