David M. Rothschild

David M. Rothschild

Economist, Senior Principal Researcher
Fields: Political Science (public opinion, predictions), Marketing (paid media), Communications (earned media), Behavioral Economics & Finance (judgement & decision making and market design).
Data: Generative Models, Markets, Surveys, Behavioral, Administrative, Social Media, Online Telemetry.

CV

ResearchDMR.com · David@ResearchDMR.com · Download PDF

Designing the Economic Systems of the AI Era

I am an economist and research leader focused on the economic systems emerging around AI: how agents, platforms, firms, and users interact, and how those interactions should be designed to create efficient, trustworthy, equitable, and durable markets. At Microsoft Research, I operate at the intersection of research, product, and strategy. I translate frontier academic work into deployable systems, product direction, and organizational decision-making—particularly in domains where incentives, discovery, trust, and measurement determine outcomes. My core areas of research and impact are: agentic markets, information ecosystems, survey and market design, along with general behavioral economics and decision making. My work operates at scale, informing systems and decisions that affect millions of users, markets, and organizations. It is guided by a core insight: AI is not just a technological shift—it is a market design problem. The systems we build today will determine how value is created, distributed, and sustained in agentic environments.

Core Leadership & Impact

  • Designing AI Economic Systems: Leading the design of agentic markets, discovery platforms, and incentive systems that govern how AI agents, firms, and users interact at scale (e.g., the team released synthetic agentic markets in the fall, with the next iteration forthcoming).
  • Research → Technology → Product: Translating frontier research into deployable systems, product frameworks, and strategic capabilities (e.g., led the development of PredictWise's market intelligence platform, which scaled to millions of users).
  • Executive Strategy and Advisory: Briefing and advising senior leadership on high-stakes decisions related to AI deployment, platform strategy, and market design.
  • Information Ecosystems and Trust: Leading work on misinformation, media systems, and trust in digital and AI-driven environments (e.g., the team released online dashboards that shifted key stakeholders' understanding of news and information flows).
  • Measurement and Decision Systems: Developing large-scale experimentation, survey, and forecasting systems to support decision-making under uncertainty (e.g., led foundational work on modeling non-probability data that is now industry standard, and currently leading foundational work on how AI affects survey research workflows).

Positions

Current
Microsoft Research, New York, NY — Economist, Senior Principal Researcher (2012–Present)
University of Pennsylvania — Principal Investigator, PennMap, CSS Lab (2021–Present)

Previous
Yahoo! Research, New York, NY — Post-Doctoral Economist (2011–2012)
New York University — Member, Social Media and Political Participation (2015–2017)
Columbia University — Fellow, Applied Statistics Center (2012–2015)
University of Pennsylvania — Fellow, Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (2014–2015)

Education

University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business (2006–2011)
Ph.D., Applied Economics (Business and Public Policy concentration)
Advisors: Justin Wolfers, Sunshine Hillygus

Brown University (1998–2002)
Sc.B., Civil Engineering | B.A., History
Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi

Research & Publications

Published extensively at the intersection of economics, AI, and computational social science, with work appearing in leading journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, Management Science, JASA, APSR, Science Advances, Public Opinion Quarterly, ACM EC, and Nature Human Behaviour.

14,000+ citations (h-index: 32)

Key areas of contribution:
  • Market design for digital and AI-driven environments
  • Misinformation and digital media ecosystems
  • Survey and market measurement methodology
  • Behavioral economics and decision-making
  • Prediction markets and information aggregation
👉 Full publication list: ResearchDMR.com/Academic

Professional Leadership & Engagement

  • Co-Chair, AAPOR Task Force on Responsible AI Integration in Survey Research (2025–2026) — leading the development of new disclosure and transparency guidelines for industry and academic studies.
  • Referee for leading journals across economics, political science, communications, and computer science — including AER, PNAS, Nature, Science Advances, Nature Human Behavior, APSR, Management Science, POQ, QJPS, and ACM EC.
  • Advisor and collaborator on large-scale data partnerships — TargetSmart, Catalist, Pollfish, 605, Nielsen, TVEyes.
  • Research funding: Harmony Labs (2017–2019), Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz PhD Fellowship (2009–2011), Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship (2010).

Speaking & Presentations

Frequent speaker at universities, research labs, corporate events, and conferences — including MIT, Cornell, Stanford, Penn (Wharton), Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, National Academy of Sciences, DARPA, Google, Nielsen, the New York Federal Reserve, and major academic conferences.
Full seminar list
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (2010, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2025) · University of Kansas Business School (2011) · Santa Clara University Business School (2011, 2014) · eBay Research Lab (2011) · Queens College (2011) · Yahoo! Research (2011) · Drexel University LeBow College (2011) · University of Colorado Leeds School (2013) · Duke University (2013) · Fordham (2014) · Stanford GSB (2014) · Stanford MS&E (2016) · NYU (2014, 2018) · New York Federal Reserve (2015) · Columbia Business School (2016, 2024) · Cornell Roper Center (2017) · Cal Poly (2019) · Google (2019) · Nielsen (2019, 2022) · National Academy of Sciences (2019, 2020) · Harvard (2021) · DARPA (2021) · SafeGraph (2021) · MIT (2022, 2025) · Poynter (2022) · Johns Hopkins (2022) · Cornell Tech (2023) · Michigan School of Information (2024) · Cornell (2024) · Rutgers (2024) · World Bank (2025) · COLM Keynote (2025)
Regular conference attendance
Political Science: APSA · MPSA · AAPOR
Behavioral/Economics: SJDM · BDRM/SPUDM · ACR · EC · NBER Political Economy and Market Design · AEA
Computational Social Science: IC2S2 · CODE@MIT

Media & Popular Writing

Regular contributor to public discourse through major outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, NPR, PBS, and MSNBC. Founded and authored PredictWise (2010–2020). 👉 Full list: ResearchDMR.com/Popular

Pre-Academic Experience

Professional experience (2002–2006)
President, DemStore — Washington, DC (2003–2006)
Largest political materials consulting firm in USA: design, production, inventory, distribution and direct sales. Merchandising for all major Democratic presidential campaigns in 2004.

Materials Director, Tony Sanchez for Governor — Austin, TX (2002)
Civil Engineering Intern, Consolidated Edison — New York, NY (2001)
White House Intern — Washington, DC (1999)

Executive Bio

David M. Rothschild is a Senior Principal Researcher and Economist at Microsoft Research in New York City. His work spans polling, prediction markets, social media and online data, large-scale behavioral and administrative datasets, and large language models. He focuses on practical and policy-relevant questions, including how public opinion evolves, how markets for news and information function, the effects of advertising, and how AI is reshaping productivity and economic systems. David currently co-chairs AAPOR's Task Force on Responsible AI Integration in Survey Research and leads research on the emerging agentic economy.