Dr. Matthew Rabin

Biography

Matthew Rabin is the Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics at Harvard University. His research focuses primarily on incorporating psychologically realistic assumptions into empirically applicable formal economic theory. His current topics of interest include errors in statistical reasoning, the evolution of beliefs, the effects of choice context on exhibited preferences, reference-dependent preferences, and errors that people make in inference within market learning settings. With 25 years of experience at the University of California, Berkeley's Economics Department, he joined Berkeley as an assistant professor after receiving his PhD from MIT in 1989. He has served as a visiting professor at prestigious institutions such as MIT, the London School of Economics, Northwestern, Harvard, and Cal Tech, and as a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, along with collaborative work with the Russell Sage Foundation. Rabin's honors include being an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, receiving the Graduate Economics Association Outstanding Teaching Award, being a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Research Interests