Matthew A. Gentzkow
Stanford University
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Primary Section: 54, Economic Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2022)
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Biosketch
Matthew Gentzkow is an economist who focuses on media and technology industries. His work uses large-scale empirical analysis, machine learning, and formal theory to understand how these markets evolve, how they impact social and political outcomes, and how policy can be shaped to align them with social good. He was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in Washington State. He received his undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard University, completing his PhD in 2004. He received the 2014 John Bates Clark Medal, given to the American economist under the age of forty who has made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Other awards include the Calvó-Armengol International Prize, the John Von Neumann Award, and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.
Research Interests
Matthew Gentzkow's research focuses primarily on the industrial organization and political economy of media and technology industries. With his collaborators, he has developed new machine learning methods for measuring media slant and studied the way economic and non-economic forces drive slant in equilibrium. He has studied the pricing of online news, the extent of echo chambers online and offline, the diffusion of misinformation, and the impact of social media and smartphones on political outcomes, well-being, and mental health. He has developed new theoretical models of media bias and persuasion. His work spans both historical and contemporary contexts, including studies of newspapers in the nineteenth century, television in the 1950s, online news in the early 2000s, and social media today. Other focuses of his research include health economics, the formation of brand preferences, and the determinants of retail pricing.
