Douglas Hanley is a macroeconomist who studies technological innovation and knowledge diffusion using both theoretical and empirical methods.
Some of the questions he has considered and is still considering are: Is a carbon tax the best way to encourage the development of clean technologies? What is the influence of open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia on scientific progress? How should we design patent systems to encourage pathbreaking innovation?
With a keen focus on large-scale textual data sources such as patent abstracts, Wikipedia articles, and scientific papers, his research relies increasingly on recent advances in the field of machine learning, particularly those related to large language models.