Catherine Tucker (born May 16, 1977) is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management at

MIT Sloan The MIT Sloan School of Management (branded as MIT Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs ...

, where she is also chair of the PhD program. She is known for her research into the consequences of digital data for electronic privacy,

algorithmic bias Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable harmful tendency in a computerized sociotechnical system to create " unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the a ...

, digital health, social media and online advertising. She is also a research associate at the NBER, cofounder of the Cryptoeconomics lab at MIT with Christian Catalini and coeditor at Quantitative Marketing Economics.

Biography

Catherine Tucker was born in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, and attended

Merton College Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, studying

Philosophy, Politics and Economics Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate academic degree, degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in P ...

. She emigrated to the United States in 1999, and obtained a PhD in economics from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, advised by

Susan Athey Susan Carleton Athey (born November 1970) is an American economist. She is the Economics of Technology Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining Stanford, she has been a profe ...

, Tim Bresnahan and Liran Einav. She is married and has four children. She is the niece of pioneering special effects make-up artist

Christopher Tucker Christopher Tucker (23 March 1941 – 14 December 2022) was a British make-up artist for theatre and film. He specialized in the creation of prosthetic make-up for horror films. Among his notable works were the make-up effects for ''The Elephan ...

Research field

Tucker's research focuses on the connections of marketing, economics of technology, law. Much of her publications have studied social media and its interactions with consumers. Tucker's research has evolved with the development of social media; her earlier publications focused on privacy and advertising, and now also focus in the direction of algorithmic influence and consumer interactions with the blockchain. She has published 67 scholarly papers in these related fields. Common outlets for Tucker's publications include Marketing Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and the Journal of Marketing Research. She has expertise in studying how can firms use digital data and machine learning to improve performance.

Career

Tucker teaches at the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (branded as MIT Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree progra ...

and is chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program. Tucker is also a cofounder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics lab which analyzes blockchain applications. Tucker has given talks to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

Future of Privacy Forum Roundtable and the

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...

Roundtable on Economics of Privacy. She has testified to the US Congress o
algorithmic bias
and onlin
privacy
In 2011, she received a CAREER Award from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

. In 2012, she was admitted as a Research Associate of the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic co ...

, and became the first woman to be awarded

tenure Tenure is a type of academic appointment that protects its holder from being fired or laid off except for cause, or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Academic tenure originated in the United ...

in the MIT Marketing Department. In 2015, she received the Erin Anderson Award, honoring an "emerging research star...who has exceeded the normal expectations for someone of her rank in mentoring doctoral students or junior faculty members." In 2018, she received the William O'Dell Award, for an "article ... that has made a significant contribution to marketing theory, practice or methods". Later that year Tucker went on to receive the 2018 INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award. She then continued on with Duncan Simester to win the 2020 Weitz-Weiner-O'Dell Award from the American Marketing Association. Additionally, she was appointed a visiting fellow at

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full me ...

at the

; and cofounded th
Cryptoeconomics Lab at MIT.

Selected publications

‘Privacy Protection and Technology Diffusion: The Case of Electronic Medical Records’
with Amalia Miller, ''Management Science'' (Lead Article), Vol. 55 No. 7, July 2009, pp. 1077–1093.
'Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising'
with Avi Goldfarb, ''Management Science'', Vol. 57 No. 1, January 2011, pp. 57–71.
‘Search Engine Advertising: Channel Substitution when Pricing Ads to Context’
with Avi Goldfarb, ''Management Science'', Vol. 57 No 3, March 2011, pp. 458–470.
'Can Healthcare Information Technology Save Babies?'
with Amalia Miller, ''

Journal of Political Economy The ''Journal of Political Economy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. Established by James Laurence Laughlin in 1892, it covers both theoretical and empirical economics. In the past, the ...

'', Vol. 119 No. 2, April 2011, pp. 289–324.
'Online Display Advertising: Targeting and Obtrusiveness'
with Avi Goldfarb, ''Marketing Science'' (Lead Article and Discussion Paper), Vol. 30 No. 3, May–June 2011, pp. 389–404.
‘When Does Retargeting Work? Timing Information Specificity’
with Anja Lambrecht, ''

Journal of Marketing Research ''Journal of Marketing Research'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Marketing Association. It was established in 1964 and covers all aspects of marketing research. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', ...

'' (William O'Dell Long-Term Impact Award Winner 2018), Vol. 50 (5), October 2013, pp. 561–576
'Harbingers of Failure'
with Eric Anderson, Song Lin, and Duncan Simester. ''

,'' Vol. 52 No. 5, October 2015, pp. 580–592.
‘When Early Adopters Don’t Adopt’
with Christian Catalini. ''Science'' Vol. 357, Issue 6347, July 2017, pp. 135–136.
`Algorithmic Bias? An Empirical Study into Apparent Gender-Based Discrimination in the Display of STEM Career Ads'
with Anja Lambrecht. Forthcoming at ''Management Science''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tucker, Catherine Living people British economists American economists 1977 births British expatriate academics in the United States British women economists American women economists MIT Sloan School of Management faculty Alumni of Merton College, Oxford People from Oxford British marketing people 21st-century American women