Walmart Names U. of Chicago Professor as First Chief Economist

John List, a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago, will be Walmart's first chief economist, Walmart EVP Tom Ward shared April 13.  

In LinkedIn post welcoming List to the company, Ward said that List, a specialist in behavioral economics, will "help [Walmart U.S.] use data to create a clearer understanding of why customers make the choices they do—so we can make sure we’re giving customers and members more of what they want." List has served as chief economist for Lyft since May 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.

List joined the University of Chicago as an economics professor in 2005 and is the author of "The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale," released in February.

The addition of List follows Walmart's announcement April 12 that current PayPal CFO John Rainey will become the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer's next CFO on June 6. Rainey takes over from Brett Biggs, a 22-year veteran of the company. Analysts at Jefferies were upbeat on Rainey's appointment, saying they viewed it as "a progressive choice as Walmart evolves its ecosystem and thinking re: its customer as user, offering a broader suite of high-value services through Walmart and leveraging data to level up the enterprise margin profile." 

Ward, who shared the news about List, himself has made news within Walmart this year: Previously senior VP of last-mile services for Walmart U.S., Ward moved up to become the company's U.S. e-commerce chief in February.

List's recently released book—his second, after co-authoring "The Why Axis" (2013)—considers scaling as a scientific discipline rather than an artform and posits that "by understanding the science of scaling, we can drive change in our schools, workplaces, communities, and society at large." List cites among his areas of research interest why people give to charity, why people discriminate and the science of using science for policymaking.