Maria Petrova received PhD from Harvard University in 2008. She spent 2012 - 2013 as a Visiting Associate Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. In 2012-2013, she was Research Director at the Center for New Media and Society at the New Economic School, Russia. Her research interests include political economy, mass media economics, and Internet Economics. Maria has published in American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, Management Science, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, among others. Since 2016, she is a member of the Editorial Board of the Review of Economic Studies. In 2016-2023, she was a Co-Editor of the Journal of Public Economics. In 2019-2024, she was the recipient of ERC Starting Grant.
Research interests
I am an applied microeconomist whose focus is information economics, political economy, and development. I seek to understand how information flows affect complex links between economic and political phenomena. Existing works traditionally underestimate the role of information provision in media for different aspects of development, and my research fills this gap. The main question that I address in my work is how information affects political, economic, and financial outcomes in different countries. My recent research is focused on the political economy of traditional and social media, and on the causes of the growth and demise of populism and extremism.
Selected publications
Petrova M, Tapsoba A 2025, '- Information and conflict: From the role of (social) media and public opinion to big data and forecasting', Economic policy, 40 - 124 - 845 - 878.
Selected research activities
In 2025, Maria continued to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Review of Economic Studies. She was also invited to be a Theme Leader at the RECIPE CEPR grant program. She also won Europa Excelencia grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. In 2025, Maria gave Keynote Address at the NICEP 2025 conference in Nottingham, CESifo Workshop on Digital Platforms: Policies and Politics in Venice, and Macro-Pop workshop in Thessaloniki. She also presented at King's College, St Andrews, Naples, St. Gallen, CUNEF, and at the conferences in Cambridge, MA, Evanston, IL, and Paris, France.