Academic CV

Professional experience

2021-: Guest Lecturer (MA Specialization in Applied Data Science), Faculty of Economics and Management,
University of Lucerne
2017-: Assistant Professor of Economics (non-tenure-track), SEPS-HSG,
University of St. Gallen
2016-17: Visiting Researcher, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society,
Harvard University
2016: Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Economics,
University of Basel
2015-16: Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel and CABDyN Complexity Centre, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (as guest)
2011-15: Teaching and Research Assistant, Faculty of Business and Economics,
University of Basel

Education

2011-15: Ph.D. Economics (summa cum laude) University of Basel,
Political Economics in the Age of Big Public Data
2009-11: M.Sc. Business and Economics University of Basel
2006-09: B.Sc. Business Administration University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland

Affiliations

2017-: Member of the Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research (SIAW-HSG)
2018-: Research Fellow at the Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA)

Writings/Publications

Working Papers

2022: Matter, Ulrich, Roland Hodler, Johannes Ladwig: Personalization of Web Search During the 2020 US Elections. arXiv. http://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2209.14000
2022: Balles, Patrick, Ulrich Matter, Alois Stutzer: Television market size and political accountability in the US House of Representatives. IZA Discussion Paper No. 15277, IZA Institute of Labor Economics. (PDF).
2021: Matter, Ulrich, Philine Widmer: Who Owns the Online Media?. University of St.Gallen. (PDF). Available at SSRN.
2021: Guerrero, Omar, Ulrich Matter: Quantifying Vote Trading Through Network Reciprocity. SEPS-HSG Discussion Paper No. 2021-06, School of Economics and Political Science, University of St.Gallen. (PDF).
2020: Balles, Patrick, Ulrich Matter, Alois Stutzer: Special interest groups versus voters and the political economics of attention. WWZ Working Paper No. 2020/06, Center of Business and Economics (WWZ), University of Basel. (PDF).
2019: Matter, Ulrich, Paolo Roberti, Michaela Slotwinski: Vote Buying in the US Congress. CESifo Working Paper No. 7841, CESifo, Munich. (PDF). (Abstract, Media Coverage: SPIEGEL ONLINE).

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

2019: Matter, Ulrich, Alois Stutzer: Does Public Attention Reduce the Influence of Moneyed Interests? Policy Positions on SOPA/PIPA Before and After the Internet Blackout. Economic Inquiry. 57(4): 1879-1895. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12812 (PDF). (Abstract).
2019: Katz, Yarden, Ulrich Matter: Metrics of Inequality: The Concentration of Resources in the U.S. Biomedical Elite. Science as Culture. http://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2019.1694882 (PDF). (Abstract), (Working Paper, Supplemental Material). Media Coverage: Science Magazine, nrc.nl.
2019: Matter, Ulrich: Big Public Data from the Programmable Web: Opportunities and Challenges. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik (Special Issue on Big Data Analytics). 56(5): 1068–1081. http://doi.org/10.1365/s40702-019-00525-6 (PDF). (Abstract), (Best Paper Award).
2018: Matter, Ulrich: RWebData: A High-Level Interface to the Programmable Web. Journal of Open Research Software. 6(1): 1-12. http://doi.org/10.5334/jors.201 (PDF). (Abstract).
2016: Matter, Ulrich, Alois Stutzer: The Role of Party Politics in Medical Malpractice Tort Reforms. European Journal of Political Economy. 42: 17-35. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.01.001 (PDF). (Abstract).
2015: Matter, Ulrich, Alois Stutzer: pvsR: An Open Source Interface to Big Data on the American Political Sphere. PLOS ONE. 10(7): 1-21. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130501 (PDF). (R package, Code, Blogpost).
2015: Matter, Ulrich, Alois Stutzer: The Role of Lawyer-Legislators in Shaping the Law: Evidence from Voting on Tort Reforms. Journal of Law and Economics. 58(2): 357-384. http://doi.org/10.1086/684039 (PDF). (Working Paper Version, Online Appendix, Blogpost).

Books and book chapters

2020: Matter, Ulrich: Big Public Data from the Programmable Web. Springer Essentials. Springer Vieweg.
2021: Matter, Ulrich: Data Pipelines in Big Data Analytics. In D’Onofrio, S., Meier, A. (eds.). Big Data Analytics – Grundlagen, Fallbeispiele und Nutzungspotenziale. Springer.
2019: Matter, Ulrich: Ulrich Matter Recommends ‘Towards a Political Theory of the Firm’ by Luigi Zingales. In Frey, Bruno S., Schaltegger, Christoph A. (eds.). 21st Century Economics – Economic Ideas You Should Read and Remember. Springer.

Software

mediacloudr: An R Package to Interact with the Media Cloud API. R package version 0.1. https://github.com/umatter/mediacloudr

netensembleR: Analysis and Sampling of Directed Networks in R. R package version 0.1. https://github.com/umatter/netensembleR

RWebData: A High-Level Interface to the Programmable Web. R package version 0.1. https://github.com/umatter/RWebData

pvsR: An R Package to Interact with the Project Vote Smart API for Scientific Research. R Package Version 0.3. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=pvsR

Awards, grants, and scholarships

2022: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Project Grant (CHF 340,000)
2020: GFF (HSG Basic Research Fund) start-up financing (CHF 33,000)
2020: HMD Best Paper Award 2019
2019: SEPS Excellence in Teaching Award
2019: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Spark Grant (CHF 81,000)
2019: Nominee/Finalist Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching 2019
2019: GFF (HSG Basic Research Fund) start-up financing (with Roland Hodler; CHF 37,000)
2016: Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES) Young Economist Award 2016 (with Michaela Slotwinski) (URL)
2016: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Early Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship
2015: Baume & Mercier Dissertation Award (Baume & Mercier Doktoratspreis)
2015: University of Basel Research Fund 2015 Grant for outstanding junior researchers (CHF 73,000)
2012: WWZ Forum Grant (with Alois Stutzer)
2012: Johann-Jakob Speiser-Scholarship 2012 for excellent young researchers

Invited talks, seminar and conference presentations

2022: 5th Economics of Media Bias Workshop, Berlin Social Science Center.
2022: 5th International Conference on the Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship, University of Muenster.
2021: Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2021, The 2021 Meeting of the German Economic Association, University of Regensburg. Germany.
2021: EPCS 2021, The 2021 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, University of Lille, France.
2020: University of Lucerne, Switzerland.
2020: University of Bern, Switzerland.
2020: University of Hamburg, Germany.
2020: Applied Microeconomics Workshop, University of Konstanz/University of St. Gallen.
2019: Second Symposium on Ethical and Legal Issues in Big Data Research, University of Basel, Basel.
2018: EEA|ESEM Congress 2018, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
2018: 9th Computational Social Science Workshop, University of St. Gallen/University of Konstanz, St. Gallen, Switzerland.
2018: EPCS 2018, The 2018 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Università Cattolica, Rome, Italy.
2017: Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2017, The 2017 Meeting of the German Economic Association, Vienna, Austria.
2017: ALEA 2017, Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, Yale University, USA.
2017: CRCS Seminar, Center for Research on Computation and Society at SEAS, Harvard University, USA. (URL)
2017: PCS 2017, The 2017 Meeting of the Public Choice Society, New Orleans, USA.
2016: Assistentenkonferenz 2016, Universität Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
2016: SSES Annual Congress 2016, USI Lugano, Switzerland.
2016: EPCS 2016, The 2016 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg, Germany.
2015: IC²S² 2015, International Conference for Computational Social Science 2015, Helsinki, Finland.
2015: SSES Annual Congress 2015, University of Basel, Switzerland.
2015: EPCS 2015; The 2015 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, University of Groningen, Netherlands.
2014: Assistentenkonferenz 2014; Assistentenkonferenz Walter Eucken Institut, Freiburg, Germany.
2014: Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2014, The 2014 Meeting of the German Economic Association, Hamburg, Germany.
2014: EPCS 2014, The 2014 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Cambridge University, UK.
2013: EEA|ESEM Congress 2013, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
2013: Research Seminar at the Department of Computational Social Science, George Mason University, Fairfax VA, USA. (URL)
2013: Fiscal Performance: The Role of Institutions and Politicians, ZEW International Conference, Mannheim, Germany.
2013: EPCS 2013, The 2013 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Zurich, Switzerland.

Teaching

2022: Lecture: Big Data Analytics, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. (Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2021: Lecture: Datahandling: Import, Cleaning, and Visualisation, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Bachelor level, mandatory, 200 students) (Materials, Repo)
2021: Block-course: A Brief Introduction to Programming With R, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 60 students) (Materials, Repo)
2021: Lecture: Introduction to Web Mining for Social Scientists, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2021: Lecture: Big Data Analytics, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. (Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2020: Lecture: Datahandling: Import, Cleaning, and Visualisation, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Bachelor level, mandatory, 190 students) (Materials, Repo)
2020: Block-course: A Brief Introduction to Programming With R, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 60 students) (Materials, Repo)
2020: Lecture: Big Data Analytics, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. (Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2019: Lecture: Datahandling: Import, Cleaning, and Visualisation, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Bachelor level, mandatory, 190 students) (Materials)
2019: Lecture: Introduction to Web Mining for Social Scientists, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 20 students) (Materials)
2019: Block-course: A Brief Introduction to Programming With R, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 60 students) (Materials)
2019: Lecture: Big Data Statistics, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2018: Lecture: Datahandling: Import, Cleaning, and Visualisation, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Bachelor level, elective, 66 students) (Materials)
2018: Lecture: Introduction to Web Mining for Social Scientists, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2018: Block-course: A Brief Introduction to Programming With R, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 25 students) (Materials)
2018: Lecture: Public Finance, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Bachelor level, mandatory, 120 students) (Course Fact Sheet)
2017: Lecture: Introduction to Web Mining for Social Scientists, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
(Master level, elective, 30 students) (Materials)
2017: Three-day workshop on R and introductory statistics at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. (Materials)
2016: Lecture: Introduction to Political Economics, University of Basel, Switzerland.
(Bachelor level, mandatory course, 450 students)
2013-15: Teaching Assistant: Seminar in Markets and Public Policy (Master level), Public Choice and Public Economics (Bachelor level), Introduction to Political Economics (Bachelor level), Seminar in Public Choice and Public Economics (Bachelor level), Rational Choice (Master level), Economic Theory of Politics (Master level). All seminars and lectures by Prof. Dr. Alois Stutzer, University of Basel, Switzerland.