معرفی
Petra Moser is a Professor of Economics and the Alan Greenspan Professor of Economics at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, where she also serves as the faculty director of the Economics PhD program. She joined NYU Stern in 2015 as an Associate Professor and was promoted to full Professor in 2019. Prior to NYU, she held academic positions at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She earned her PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in International Relations from Yale University, and was an undergraduate at the University of Tübingen in Germany and a Fulbright student at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Her research lies at the intersection of empirical microeconomics and economic history, focusing on the determinants of creativity and innovation. She investigates how intellectual property laws—such as patents and copyrights—affect scientific, technological, and artistic progress. Her work also examines the impact of immigration on innovation, the role of institutions in fostering creativity, and individual-level factors influencing entrepreneurship. She uses historical data and empirical methods to analyze long-term trends and causal effects.
Her recent publications explore topics such as copyright in 19th-century Italian opera, the decline in U.S. invention following 1920s immigration restrictions, and the socioeconomic disparities in scientific recognition. These works reveal consistent themes: narrowly defined and time-limited intellectual property rights can stimulate innovation, while exclusionary immigration policies have long-term detrimental effects on scientific and economic progress.
- NSF CAREER grant
- Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)
Petra Moser advises PhD students in economics, including Bang Nguyen, and is actively involved in research dissemination through public lectures, media interviews (e.g., Freakonomics, IMF podcasts, CORE), and policy engagement. She has contributed to public discourse on immigration and innovation, with her research frequently cited in major outlets like Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She runs a research program that combines archival work with modern econometric techniques to uncover insights relevant to contemporary innovation policy.
