Economics

Using technology to study human behavior in relation to resources, society, goverments and business

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Microsoft Research Blog

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Learn Artificial Intelligence Skills via Residency at Microsoft

Harness Machine Learning to Improve People’s Lives At Microsoft, we are committed to leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to benefit people and greater society. Advances in AI can be applied to address some of the world’s biggest challenges, and so we are keen to nurture the next generation of talent, so they are better prepared to innovate and contribute to multiple areas of AI, including machine learning, planning, and decision making. Microsoft is…

January 2018

Microsoft Research Blog

ACM EC'17

Microsoft and intelligent markets at ACM EC’17

By David Pennock, Principal Researcher and Assistant Managing Director  The 18th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’17) starts today at MIT in Cambridge, MA, featuring some of the latest research findings at the interdisciplinary boundary between economics and computer science. Microsoft researchers will have a significant presence at the conference, co-authoring many papers, serving in leadership roles, giving an invited talk, and receiving an award. One theme at the conference is the design and…

June 2017

Microsoft Research Blog

Extensive crowdsourcing study reveals surprising results in reversal of platform design assumptions

By John Kaiser, Research News A 21-month study on the dynamics of crowdsourcing shows workers depend on collaborating with each other, upending platform designers’ long-held assumptions of crowdsourcing tasks performed in isolation. “People spend far more time on a task, trying to get it right, than we might expect, given the pay rates for many tasks,” said MSR lead researcher Mary Gray, who presented the study during this week’s Conference on Human Computation & Crowdsourcing…

November 2015

Microsoft Research Blog

Projects

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ALICE

Established: December 5, 2016

ALICE Automated Learning and Intelligence for Causation and Economics Alice is a project to direct Artificial Intelligence towards economic decision making.  We are building tools that combine state-of-the-art machine learning with econometrics – the measurement of economic systems -- in order to bring automation to economic decision making.   The heart of this project is a striving to measure causation: if you want to understand or make policy decisions in a complex economy, you need to…

Understanding the Influence of Government Controlled Media: Evidence from Air Pollution in China

Established: November 1, 2013

This project establishes several empirical facts to better understand the influence of government-controlled media in autocratic regimes. We document that government control and bias on the controversial topic of air pollution are salient; that individuals do not discount repeated information, even when they know the information comes from one biased government source; that individuals have difficulty interpreting conflicting pieces of information; and that the population is heterogeneous in the degree to which they update. These…

The Impact of Local Trade Barriers on Export Activities, Firm Performance and Resource Misallocation

Established: November 1, 2014

It is well known that various forms of non-tariff barriers exist among Chinese provinces. Empirically, it is difficult to measure these barriers because they can take many forms. This research takes advantage of an export VAT rebate policy reform in 2004 as a natural experiment to identify the existence of internal trade barriers and study the impacts on TFP and resource allocation. In particular, as a result of shifting tax rebate burdens, the 2004 reform…

Products & Downloads

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Viral Economy Simulator

January 2008

Financial efficiency is the premier performance measure for most systems. Existing economic ecosystems for distribution of multimedia leave a lot to be desired: client-server platforms do not scale well, resulting in substantial operational costs, whereas peer-to-peer platforms cannot police copyright control and are thus notorious for not being able to capitalize on their vast delivery…

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Videos

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People

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Groups

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Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group

The Adaptive Systems and Interaction group pursues advances in principles of intelligence and interaction and applications of these advances to enhance computational systems and interfaces. The team includes groups exploring foundations of sensing, learning, and decision making, search and retrieval, and human-computer interaction.

Computational Social Science

With an increasing amount of data on every aspect of our daily activities – from what we buy, to where we travel, to who we know, and beyond – we are able to measure human behavior with precision largely thought impossible just a decade ago, creating an unprecedented opportunity to address longstanding questions in the social sciences. Leveraging this sea of information requires both scalable computational tools, and understanding how the substantive scientific questions should…

Economics and Computer Science (EconCS) at MSR-NE

Economics and computer science (EconCS) is at the core of Microsoft Research New England, an interdisciplinary lab of thirty full-time researchers and postdocs working in machine learning, statistics, computational biology, theoretical computer science, algorithmic game theory, economics, social media, cryptography, and mathematics.

Career Opportunities

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Research Intern – Social Media Collective

Type: Internship
Lab/Location: Microsoft Research Lab - New England
Research Area: Economics, Social sciences

Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for advanced PhD students to join the Social Media Collective (SMC) for its 12-week Internship program. The Social Media Collective (in New England, we are Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary L. Gray, with current postdoc Elena Maris) bring together empirical and critical perspectives to understand the political and cultural dynamics that underpin social media technologies. Learn more about us here. The Social Media Collective (SMC) is a network of social science and humanistic…

Research Intern – Econometrics and Machine Learning

Type: Internship
Lab/Location: Microsoft Research Lab - New England
Research Area: Artificial intelligence, Economics

Microsoft Research New England has a single research position in machine learning and econometrics for the summer, working in the ALICE group with Greg Lewis and Vasilis Syrgkanis. Past work has included non-parametric IV estimation using neural nets, inference in high-dimensional settings, and estimation and policy optimization with heterogeneous treatment effects, all in settings where the objective is causal inference or counterfactual prediction. Microsoft Research New England is comprised of thirty full-time researchers and postdocs working in…

Research Intern – Computational Social Science at Microsoft Research NYC

Type: Internship
Lab/Location: Microsoft Research Lab - New York City
Research Area: Multiple

The Computational Social Science group at Microsoft Research NYC is actively seeking summer interns to join us in advancing the state-of-the-art in computational social science and online experimentation. The ideal applicant will possess awareness of the theoretical and experimental social science literature, experience with experimental design, as well as significant computer programming expertise. Microsoft Research offers an exhilarating and supportive environment for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research with access to an extraordinary diversity of big and small…

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