Tim DeStefano

Posted in People

Research Associate Professor

Ph.D., Economics, University of Nottingham

Research Interests 

  • Digital Technology, Firm Performance and Economic Growth
  • Policy Environments and Technology Diffusion

About

Timothy DeStefano is a Research Associate Professor at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. He is an applied economist with expertise in the areas of digital technology, artificial intelligence (AI), industrial robotics, firm productivity and trade. His research at Georgetown examines the effects of digital technology on firm reorganization and performance using a mixture of field experiments and observational data techniques.

Over the last year, Tim has partnered with various businesses to construct and execute field experiments which measure the causal effects of AI on firm performance. Tim has also carried out a number of research projects that examine how fiber broadband and cloud computing impact firm productivity, organization and employment. He has extensive experience assessing policy interventions for multiple European and Asia Pacific governments on a range of economic outcomes at the region, firm, and individual levels.

Before joining Georgetown University, Tim worked for 3 years at Harvard University in the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) where he led a team to establish a new research area at the lab on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Before moving to Harvard, Tim worked as an Economist/Policy Analyst for 5 years at the OECD and for 1 year for the G20. Tim’s work has been presented at a number of high-level academic events including the NBER meetings (on the Economics of Digitization and Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship), the Royal Economics Society, and the Toulouse School of Economics and to policy makers at the G20, the OECD, the World Bank, the Italian Parliament, the Ministry of Finance France, the Ministry of Economics Trade and Industry Japan and the Vatican. Tim holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Nottingham (UK).

Publications

SSRN, “Why Providing Humans with Interpretable Algorithms May, Counterintuitively, Lead to Lower Decision-making Performance”

In his free time, Tim enjoys hiking when it’s warm and snowboarding when it’s cold. 

Personal website: https://www.timdestefano.com/
Email address: timothy.destefano@georgetown.edu