The Yale School of Management has beat out the likes of Stanford, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to grab renowned economist Judy Chevalier ’89, who will join Yale economist Ben Polak as SOM’s newest tenured faculty members.

In addition to Chevalier and Polak, two new junior professors — Rodney Parker and Nat Keohane ’93 — have also accepted offers to begin teaching at SOM next year. Including the new hires, six new faculty have agreed to SOM offers this year.

Chevalier specializes in economic strategy, and her past work has addressed the impact of “noise traders” on financial markets and how sensitive Internet shoppers are to price changes. Polak, who is currently a professor in Yale’s economics department, will take on a joint appointment next year, working half-time in the economics department and half-time at SOM.

“[Chevalier’s] a nationally recognized force in the field, and it’s good to have her here,” SOM Deputy Dean Stan Garstka said. “It makes our strategy group one of the strongest of any management school.”

Though she received offers from top economics and business programs at Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley and MIT, Chevalier said a job offer to her husband from a New Haven biotechnology firm and a desire to return to her alma mater helped convince her to come to New Haven. She made her final decision yesterday.

“I have very strong ties to Yale — my husband and I were both Yale undergrads,” Chevalier said.

Chevalier said she is not concerned that SOM is ranked lower than some of the other schools where she received offers.

“There are some things that go into rankings that are not important to a faculty member,” Chevalier said. “What’s going on in the career counseling office, for example, doesn’t directly affect me.”

More importantly, she said, the SOM and Yale’s Economics Department have a lot of experts in her field of interest and SOM, as a part of a large university, will likely continue to maintain a strong commitment to research.

Polak currently teaches economic theory and economic history.

“Ben has a lot of dimensions to him that are missing in our faculty,” Garstka said. “He’s a great economic historian, and also the only person in the school with a true joint appointment. He’s a marvellous example in the way we want to make links with other relevant schools and departments.

Parker will join the operations management department from the University of Michigan, where he is completing his thesis. He was the department’s first choice, and the department will not make any more hires, operations research professor Edward Kaplan said.

Keohane, who is completing his doctorate at Harvard University this year, will join the SOM faculty as an assistant professor of strategy and economic theory.

Keohane and Parker will join two other junior professors — MIT’s Dina Mayzlin and New York University’s Sudhir Karunakaran — who accepted offers to join SOM’s marketing department last December.