Michael L. Anderson

Research Expertise and Interest

health economics, environmental economics

Research Description

Michael Anderson is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Anderson’s research interests include the areas of transportation economics, environmental economics, health economics, and applied econometrics, especially relating to questions of causal inference.

Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006) and a B.A. in Economics from Swarthmore College (1999). He has published in a range of economics, scientific, medical, and statistical journals, including the American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of the American Statistical Association, BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Science.  

In the News

Crowd-sourced online reviews help fill restaurant seats, study finds

A new study by UC Berkeley economists analyzed restaurant ratings on Yelp.com and found that, on a scale of 1 to 5, a half-star rating increase translates into a 19 percent greater likelihood that an eatery’s seats will be full during peak dining times. The study, published this month in the Economic Journal, found that the increase is independent of changes in price or in food and service quality.