Rate My Professor Matthew Leister

Matthew Leister is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Economics at Monash University. He previously served as Senior Lecturer, having been promoted from Lecturer in the department around 2018. His research interests are in microeconomic theory, finance, and social and economic networks. Leister's work examines phenomena such as information in markets, word-of-mouth communication, trade and intermediation, auctions, bargaining, and charitable giving. He has taught courses including Financial Economics at Monash University.

Leister has produced eight research articles documented on the Monash University research portal. Key publications include "Deterrence in Networks" with Leo Bao and Lata Gangadharan in Games and Economic Behavior (2025); "Influencing a Polarized and Connected Legislature" with Rohan D. Chaudhury and Birendra Rai in Games and Economic Behavior (2023); "Persuadable or Dissuadable Altruists? The Impact of Information of Recipient Characteristics on Giving" with Lata Gangadharan, Paul J. Grossman, Lingbo Huang, and Erte Xiao in The Economic Journal (2023); "Social Connectedness and Local Contagion" with Yves Zenou and Junjie Zhou in The Review of Economic Studies (2022); "Natural Disaster and Risk-Sharing Behavior: Evidence from Rural Bangladesh" with Asadul Islam, Minhaj Mahmud, and Paul A. Raschky in Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2020); "Word-of-Mouth Communication and Search" with Arthur Campbell and Yves Zenou in The RAND Journal of Economics (2020); "Information Acquisition and Welfare in Network Games" in Games and Economic Behavior (2020); "Paternalistic Giving: Restricting Recipient Choice" with Lata Gangadharan, Paul J. Grossman, and Kristy Jones in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (2018); and "Liquidity Risk in Sequential Trading Networks" with Shachar Kariv and Maciej H. Kotowski in Games and Economic Behavior (2018). These contributions span experimental economics, network theory, and behavioral aspects of economic decision-making.

Leister served on the Faculty Research Degree Committee at Monash Business School. He now works as a staff data scientist at Airbnb, focusing on marketplace data science and optimization problems.