Oliver Hauser is Professor of Public Policy and Director of AI at the Bennett School of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. In addition, he serves as Senior Advisor in the Evaluation Task Force in the UK Cabinet Office and H.M. Treasury. He is a renowned expert in economics, public policy, leadership, and artificial intelligence (AI), and he is a sought-after speaker and advisor in the public and private sectors.
Oliver is a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society, Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard Kennedy School and London Business School, and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Before joining Cambridge, he held academic appointments at the University of Exeter, Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University and B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Innsbruck.
In the UK government, Oliver serves as a member on the Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel, the Government Skills College of Experts, and the Advisory Board on Digital, Data, Innovation & AI Skills. He has advised governments in the UK, US, and Australia, as well as international organisations such as the UN and OECD, on the evaluation of policies and on the responsible and effective use of AI in the public sector. In the private sector, he has advised executives and senior leaders at Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 firms, private companies, and consultancies.
Please click here for Oliver’s website and CV.
Research interests
Oliver is interested in a wide range of topics in economics and public policy, including studying the impact of AI on productivity and innovation in the public and private sector; how economic and social inequalities shape our lives and institutions; and the importance of maintaining public goods and encouraging cooperation.
Oliver’s research has been published in the leading academic journals, including Science, Nature, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Management Science, PNAS, and Nature Human Behaviour. He has received several prestigious awards and prizes, including being named as one of the world’s best “40 under 40” MBA Professors by Poets & Quants and “30 Top Thinkers Under 30” by Pacific Standard. He has also won the UKRI Research and Innovation Impact Award, the Wharton People Analytics research competition prize, and the Harvard John Parker Award.
Teaching
Oliver teaches on the M.Phil in Public Policy.
Key publications
- Why evaluating the impact of AI needs to start now (with M. Light, L. Shelmerdine and J. Blumenau) Nature, 2025, vol. 643, pp. 910-912
- Behaviorally designed training leads to more diverse hiring (with C. Arslan, E. H. Chang, S. Chilazi and I. Bohnet) Science, 2025, vol. 387, pp. 364-366
- Believed gender differences in social preferences (with C. Exley, M. Moore and J.-H. Pezzuto) Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2025, vol. 140, pp. 403-458
- Gender-inclusive language and economic decision-making (with L. Balafoutas, H. Fornwagner and E. Hauser) Management Science, 2025
- Catch me if you can: Using machine learning and behavioral interventions to reduce unethical behavior (with M. Greene and K. DeCelles) Behavioural Public Policy, 2025
- Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content (with A. R. Doshi) Science Advances, 2024, vol. 10
- Measuring inequality beyond the Gini coefficient may clarify conflicting findings (with K. Blesch and J. M. Jachimowicz) Nature Human Behaviour, 2022, vol. 6, pp. 1525-1536
- Human-centred mechanism design with democratic AI (with R. Koster et al.) Nature Human Behaviour, 2022, vol. 6, pp. 1398-1407
- Reducing discrimination against job seekers with and without employment gaps (with A. Kristal, L. Nicks and J. Gloor) Nature Human Behaviour, 2022, vol. 7, pp. 211-218
- Ideology selectively shapes attention to inequality (with H. Waldfogel et al.) PNAS, 2021, vol. 118, no. 14, pp. 1-12
- Social dilemmas among unequals (with C. Hilbe, K. Chatterjee and M. A. Nowak) Nature, 2019, vol. 572, pp. 524-527
- The critical role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation (with J. M. Jachimowicz, J. O’Brien, E. Sherman and A. Galinsky) Nature Human Behaviour, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 757-764
- Cooperating with the future (with D. G. Rand, A. Peysakhovich and M. A. Nowak) Nature, 2014, vol. 511, pp. 220-223
