Leonardo Bursztyn
The Saieh Family Professor of Economics
Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics,
University of ChicagoLeonardo Bursztyn is a prominent academic economist and CEO founder of the startup NOMO. Leo studies the ways that social environments impact individuals’ economic decisions. He is best known for studying misperceived social norms, peer effects, and collective traps
Media Features
How to Get Kids to Give Up Social Media on Their Own
At a time when consensus feels like a relic of another era, one issue has managed to unite policymakers across the ideological spectrum. Read More ->
What price cool? $31 a month, according to students
What is the price of cool? About $31 a month, according to new research by Leonardo Bursztyn of the University of Chicago and co-authors. Read More ->
New research quantifies why you want to quit social media but can’t
Maybe you’ve come to the conclusion that social media apps can be a real time suck. Read More ->
Latest Essays
Product market traps: The case of social media
The effects of social media on the welfare of individual users are significant but deeply ambiguous. This column suggests that a large share of university students who use Instagram and TikTok are worse off emotionally than if the platforms did not exist.
How gender norms are perceived across the world
Recent work has documented that misperceptions of norms may exacerbate gender inequality and restrict women’s freedom in Saudi Arabia. This column uses data from 60 countries across six continents, collected through the World Gallup Poll, to investigate.
Rationales and social cover
Dissent plays a vital role in driving social change, but can be limited when individuals fear social sanction for expressing opinions about controversial issues. This column explores the function of rationales in facilitating dissent on both sides of the US political spectrum.
Linkedin Posts
Only one of my papers has ever inspired me to launch a startup. That paper has just been published in the December issue of the American Economic Review (AER) journal.
In July 2023 my co-authors (Ben Handel, Rafael J Jiménez Durán and Christopher Roth) and I ran experiments and discovered that young social media users preferred to give up social media, but only if their peers did the same.
My new paper, with Alex Imas, Rafael J Jiménez Durán, Aaron Leonard, and Chris Roth, now out at NBER, studies how social forces shape parents’ adoption of AI-based learning tools for their kids’ education.
Using incentivized experiments, we show that parental demand increases with the share of other teenagers using the technology,with social forces increasing willingness to pay for AI
We’re excited to share that NOMO is partnering with Nesta, BIT, and the amazing Betsy Levy Paluck.
This month, we’re rolling out NOMO across 50+ schools in the UK – reaching roughly 25,000 students over the next three months.
We’ve seen how the same social forces that make social media hard to resist – belonging, peer influence, status
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Leonardo
Leonardo Bursztyn is the Saieh Family Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also an Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, the co-director of the Becker Friedman Institute Political Economics Initiative, and the founder and director of the Normal Lab.
Quick Links
- Research
- Normal Lab
- Eassy
- Podcasts
- Press
- Nomo
Contact Info
- 1126 E 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637
- bursztyn@uchicago.edu
For any questions, please contact Leo’s assistant:
Amymarie Anderson — amymarie@uchicago.edu
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