Assistant Professor of Economics
Department of Social and Political Sciences
Bocconi University
germain.gauthier@unibocconi.it
curriculum vitae
Google Scholar
GitHub
About Me
I am an economist working at the intersection of political economy, public economics, and econometrics. In my applied work, I study the societal consequences of digital technologies (e.g., social media, large language models). I am particularly interested in the emergence and amplification of bias in algorithmic systems and how these shape economic and political outcomes. I have also studied the impact of social media on protests, political attitudes, and gender norms. In my methods work, I develop models to extract structured information from unstructured data (e.g., texts, images, videos). My recent focus has been on estimating latent factor models (e.g., ideology, topics) using deep neural networks.
I am affiliated with CESifo, DONDENA and IGIER research centers. I am also involved in various initiatives at Bocconi, including the DONDENA AI and Society Initiative (DAISI), the AXA Gender Lab, and the Monitoring Democracy Initiative (MoDe).
Recent News
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14/09/2026: I gave a talk to Bocconi PhD students on how I use AI coding agents. See the slides here.
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03/09/2026: I gave a talk at APSA on recent ongoing work on whether voters can rely on electoral campaign platforms to infer what politicians will say and do once in office. See the slides here.
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01/09/2026: I gave a short lecture on “Causal inference with unstructured data” for the Zurich Summer School in AI and Applied Economics.
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21/05/2026: I will be a guest researcher at CESifo between 22 June and 3 July. Send me an email if you would like to meet with me!
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01/04/2026: I am visiting the Paris School of Economics for a couple of weeks, where I will present the new version of my work on the Me Too movement. New draft coming soon.
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21/02/2026: Our paper The Political Effects of X’s Feed Algorithm is out in Nature! Four years in the making. Check it out!
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17/01/2026: Just visited USI Lugano for a week, teaching a PhD level course on Text as Data (joint with Philine Widmer). Check out the slides and notebooks in my teaching section if interested.