Michael D. Whinston is an American economist and currently the Sloan Fellows Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously he was the Robert E. and Emily H. King Professor at Northwestern University and is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Econometric Society. His research has covered a variety of topics in microeconomics and industrial organization, including firm behavior in oligopolistic markets, antitrust, game theory, the design of contracts and organizations, law and economics, and most recently, health economics.