Ulrich Matter

I am a Professor of Applied Data Science at Bern University of Applied Sciences and Affiliate Professor of Economics at the University of St. Gallen. My primary research interests lie at the intersection of data science, quantitative political economics, and online media economics.

I am PI for the SNSF Grants on Consequences of Personalized Information Provision Online: Segregation, Polarization, and Radicalization (2022-2026) and on Ideological Ad Targeting in Consumer Markets and the Political Market Place (2023-2027).

Before joining the University of St. Gallen, I was a Visiting Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

recent publications

Web Search Personalization during the US 2020 Election

Ulrich Matter, and Roland Hodler

American Economic Review: Insights, 2025

Forthcoming

Bib

@article{MatterHodler2025b,
  author = {Matter, Ulrich and Hodler, Roland},
  title = {Web Search Personalization during the US 2020 Election},
  journal = {American Economic Review: Insights},
  year = {2025},
  note = {Forthcoming},
  url = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20240115},
}

An Introduction to Web Mining: with Applications in R

Ulrich Matter

2025

Bib Website

@book{matter2025a,
  author = {Matter, Ulrich},
  title = {An Introduction to Web Mining: with Applications in R},
  year = {2025},
  series = {Use R!},
  publisher = {Springer Nature},
  address = {Cham, Switzerland},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-96638-5},
  isbn = {978-3-031-96637-8},
  url = {https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-96638-5},
}

Special Interest Groups Versus Voters and the Political Economics of Attention

Patrick Balles, Ulrich Matter, and Alois Stutzer

The Economic Journal, May 2024

Abs Bib PDF

We investigate whether US House representatives favour special interest groups over constituents in periods of low media attention to politics. Analysing 666 roll calls from 2005 to 2018, we show that representatives are more likely to vote against their constituency’s preferred position the more special interest money they receive from groups favouring the opposite position. The latter effect is significantly larger when less attention is paid to politics due to distraction by exogenous newsworthy events like natural disasters. The effect is mostly driven by short-term opportunistic behaviour than the short-term scheduling of controversial votes in periods with high news pressure.
@article{balles_etal2024, author = {Balles, Patrick and Matter, Ulrich and Stutzer, Alois}, title = {{Special Interest Groups Versus Voters and the Political Economics of Attention}}, journal = {The Economic Journal}, volume = {134}, number = {662}, pages = {2290-2320}, year = {2024}, month = may, issn = {0013-0133}, doi = {10.1093/ej/ueae020}, }