Matthew Ross

From UConn PhD to the AER: Matt Ross Returns to Campus to Present His Research

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On October 13, 2026, Matthew Ross (UConn PhD 2016) came back to campus to present his paper “Do Better Detectives Reduce Crime?” in our department seminar. Matt is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University, jointly appointed in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics.

Matt Ross presenting at the Department Seminar

Using data on more than 160,000 criminal investigations in Austin, Texas, Matt showed that hiring higher-quality detectives raises arrest rates. The gains come both on the new detectives’ own cases and on cases handled by their colleagues. It was a lively talk, with plenty of questions from faculty and students. Matt also spent a full day meeting with his former professors, new professors, and current PhD students.

The seminar comes on the heels of a major publication. Matt’s paper “The Effect of Field Training Officers on Police Use of Force,” with Chandon Adger and CarlyWill Sloan, appeared in the May 2026 issue of the American Economic Review.

Matt wrote his dissertation under Professor Couch (chair), and Professor Furtado and Professor Ray were on his committee. He won the department’s Third Year Paper Award and the University of Connecticut Dissertation Award while he was here. Much of Matt’s work on racial profiling in police stops is with Professor Ross as well as former and current UConn students. This includes a recent paper in the Journal of Human Resources with Jesse Kalinowski (UConn PhD 2018). It also includes ongoing research with current PhD students, Xiaofeng Gong and Da Xu, using cell phone mobility data.

Thank you for coming back to share your work, Matt! You can learn more about his research at https://www.mbross-econ.com/.

Matthew Ross, Ph.D. 2016, Associate Professor at Northeastern University

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Matthew Ross, 2016 UConn Ph.D. in Economics, has been hired by the School Public Policy & Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics at Northeastern University as an Associate Professor, leaving his previous Assistant Professor position at Claremont Graduate School.

Matt works on research related to technological change in the labor market, racial profiling in policing and the process of scientific research. His work has been or will soon be published in several major journals including Nature, Journal of Human Resources, Industrial Labor Relations Review, and Criminology and Public Policy. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the US Department of Transportation.

PhD Graduate Matthew Ross in The Guardian

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Matt Ross, one of our Ph.D. graduates, was interviewed by The Guardian about the new study of racial profiling in police stops in the State of California, as well as about his own research with UConn faculty member Steve Ross and another Ph.D. graduate Jesse Kalinowski:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/02/california-police-black-stops-force

Professor Ross in the AEA Papers and Proceedings

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Professor Ross’s work with former students Jesse Kalinowski (Quinnipiac) and Matt Ross (NYU) was published in the 2019 American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings.

In this paper, they document that police change where they patrol and the types of infractions that they monitor when darkness falls.  This behavior has important implications for attempts to test for racial profiling in traffic stops where often stops at night when race cannot be observed are used as a benchmark to determining whether police disproportionately stop minority motorists during the day (non-gated link to working paper below).

https://hceconomics.uchicago.edu/research/working-paper/now-you-see-me-now-you-dont-geography-police-stops

HCEO Research Spotlight on Racial Profiling Research

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Professor Stephen Ross and his coauthors, Jesse Kalinowski at Quinnipiac University and Matthew Ross at Ohio State University (both former Ph.D. students at UConn), have recently released on new working paper on racial discrimination in police traffic stops in Connecticut.

This research was selected by the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group at the University of Chicago to be featured in their research spotlight series. The spotlight article can be found at:

https://hceconomics.uchicago.edu/news/research-spotlight-endogenous-driving-behavior-veil-darkness-tests-racial-profiling

Matthew Ross Accepts Post-Doc Position at Ohio State University

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Matthew Ross, an Economics graduate student at UConn, has just accepted a three-year post-doctoral position at Ohio State University.

The position is part of a project jointly funded by the NSF and the NIH. Principal Investigators for the project include Joshua Hawley (John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State), Julia Lane (Wagner School of Public Affairs at NYU), Jason Owen-Smith (Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan) and Bruce Weinberg (Department of Economics, Ohio State University).   Ross’s thesis committee consists of Ken Couch (Chair), Delia Furtado, and Subhash Ray.