Matthew C. Harding, Faculty Fellow of Energy Initiative and Assistant Professor of Economics and Faculty Research Scholar of DuPRI's Population Research Center and Associate Director of the Duke Information Initiative and Co-Director of the Duke Energy Data Analytics Lab and Director of the Duke-UNC USDA Center for Behavioral Economics

Please note: Matthew has left the "Economics" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

Matthew Harding is an Economist and Data Scientist who uses Big Data to answer crucial policy questions in Energy/Environment and Health/Nutrition. He is an Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a Faculty Fellow in the Duke Energy Initiative. He also directs the Duke-UNC USDA Center for Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice Research, which was launched in the fall of 2014.

He aims to understand how individuals make consumption choices in a data rich environment, and quantify the individual and social welfare impact of their choices. Building on a rigorous foundation in econometric methods, he explores the potential of Big Data to estimate better models and predict the choices made by individuals, while taking into account both traditional economic models and recent developments in behavioral economics. He is interested in the potential for Big Data to solve “wicked problems”, complex interdisciplinary problems in public policy by the use of three fundamental levers: prices, behavioral nudges and technology. In particular he is interested in identifying “triple-win” solutions. These are solutions to the most challenging problems of our time that benefit individual consumers, are profitable for firms, and have a large positive impact on society at large. Examples include policies that promote energy efficiency and healthy food choices.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	196 Rubenstein Hall, Box 90312, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:	(919) 613-9300
Email Address:
Web Pages:	http://becr.sanford.duke.edu http://people.duke.edu/~mch55/

Education:

Ph.D.	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	2007
M.Phil.	University of Oxford (UK)	2002
B.A.	University College of London	2000

Keywords:

Econometrics • Economics • Energy policy • Food • Public Policy

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. C Wang, B Jin, ZD Bai, KK Nair and M Harding, Strong limit of the extreme eigenvalues of a symmetrized auto-cross covariance matrix, The Annals of Applied Probability, vol. 25 no. 6 (December, 2015), pp. 3624-3683, ISSN 1050-5164 [doi]
2. MC Harding, Exogenous Growth Theory, in Macroeconomics: Imperfections, Institutions and Policies, edited by W Carlin and D Soskice, manual (October, 2015)
3. MC Harding and J Hausman, Finite Sample Bias Corrections for IV Estimation with Weak and Many Instruments, manual (October, 2015)
4. MC Harding and C Lamarche, Penalized Forecasting in Panel Data Models: Predicting Household Electricity Demand from Smart Meter Data, manual (October, 2015)
5. M Burda, M Harding and J Hausman, A Bayesian Semiparametric Competing Risk Model with Unobserved Heterogeneity, Journal of Applied Econometrics, vol. 30 no. 3 (April, 2015), pp. 353-376, ISSN 0883-7252 [doi]