Matthew Kidder
Assistant Professor of Economics and Data Sciences
Office: McClurg 311B
Email: Matthew.Kidder@newberry.edu
Department: Business Administration
Degrees:
Ph.D. | University of California - Irvine (2016)
B.S. | American University (2003)
Bio:
Dr. Kidder received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California Irvine with a focus in applied international trade. He joined the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing as a tenure track Assistant Professor. There he taught applied statistical methods to Ph.D. students in the Business School and conducted original research on global value chains. Dr. Kidder’s research work is published by the World Bank and he has other academic papers under review.
Dr. Kidder was the last US Academic trade economist, to leave Beijing during the height of the US-China trade war, where he lived for half a decade. His research work in China discovered that traditional trade theories overemphasize the benefits of industrial specialization since he discovered that there are gains to diversification in production. This discovery is highly relevant to understand the implications of hollowing out US Manufacturing and flagging US comparative advantages in the World Economy. Dr. Kidder suggests that Chinese subsidization of zombie companies has contributed to China’s rise as a global power, which is a heterodox view in economics.
Dr. Kidder is also a data scientist practitioner, where he has developed algorithms in Artificial Intelligence that are unique in the world. This work is proprietary and not currently in the public domain. As an applied statistician, he is most concerned with understanding how individuals are impacted differently by a given stimulus. His work statistically teases these individual level effects out of large and messy data sets.
Dr. Kidder is passionate about efficiency and automation. His is constantly creating little tools that automate his job and he loves to share these tools with others. He is also passionate about the communities in which he lives and is always searching for opportunities to make an impact at all levels.
Prior to becoming an economist, Dr. Kidder was an entrepreneur, a semi-professional football player, an extreme sports athlete.