Michael Spence, the former dean of the Graduate School of Business, Nobel laureate in economics and Philip H. Knight professor emeritus, will leave Stanford to join New York University’s Stern School of Business faculty on Sept. 1.

According to a statement from NYU President John Sexton on the Stern School of Business Web site, “an economist of his reputation only joins an institution where he knows that there is a robust intellectual environment and he will have colleagues of this highest caliber.”

Sexton said Stern’s decision to join the NYU faculty reflects a success there in faculty building and “development as a global network university.”

Spence, 66, won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 for analysis of markets with asymmetric information, sharing it with Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Professor George Akerlof of UC-Berkeley.

He is also the chairman of the Commission on Growth and Development, a consultant for Pacific Investment Management Company in Newport Beach, an advisor at Oak Hill Investment Management in Menlo Park and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Spence earned a B.A. degree from Princeton University in 1966, a B.A.-M.A. degree from Oxford University in 1968 on a Rhodes scholarship and a Ph.D. from Harvard in economics in 1972.

-Christine McFadden