Andrew Benjamin Hall is an American political economist, academic, and author. He is the Davies Family Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at both the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) ^{[1] [2]}. His work focuses on the design and function of governance systems, applying data-driven analysis to American politics, online communities, and Web3 technologies. Hall is also affiliated with the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto) and serves as an advisor to Meta Platforms ^{[3] [4]}.

Education

Hall earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Political Science and a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Statistics from Harvard University in 2015. He completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Economics and Classics in 2009 ^{[2] [3]}.

Career

Academia

Hall has spent his academic career at Stanford University. He joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in 2013 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. In 2022, he became a tenured Professor of Political Science ^[4].

At Stanford, Hall holds several concurrent appointments. He is the Davies Family Professor of Political Economy at the Graduate School of Business and holds a courtesy appointment as a Professor of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank based at the university, and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Additionally, Hall serves as the co-director of the Democracy & Polarization Lab ^[1].

Venture Capital and Industry Advisory

Hall bridges his academic work with roles in the technology industry. He is affiliated with a16z crypto, the digital asset fund of Andreessen Horowitz. He is listed by the firm as a Research Advisor, focusing on decentralized governance and the political economy of Web3 systems ^[3]. According to his professional profile, he has served as a General Partner at the firm since January 2022 ^[4]. In his capacity at the firm, he applies principles from political science to analyze investment opportunities and research key questions in the crypto ecosystem, particularly concerning decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and large-scale social organization.

Hall also serves as an advisor to Meta Platforms, Inc. He advises the Wearables Business Group, where he uses data and research to inform AI and augmented reality (AR) strategy. Previously, he was an advisor to the company's Governance Team in Global Affairs ^[2].

Research and Expertise

Hall’s research centers on the design of effective democratic and collective decision-making systems. His methodology is heavily quantitative, employing large-scale datasets, econometrics, statistics, and machine learning tools to analyze how the structure of governance systems influences outcomes ^[1]. His work spans traditional political institutions and emerging digital platforms.

Political Economy and American Politics

A significant portion of Hall's academic work investigates American politics, including elections and legislatures. His research explores how institutional rules and incentives shape political behavior and outcomes. He has studied the causes and consequences of political polarization, arguing in his book Who Wants to Run? that the declining appeal of holding public office deters moderate candidates and empowers ideological extremists ^[4]. Other research has examined the incumbency advantage in U.S. elections, finding that a "scare-off" effect, which deters high-quality challengers, is a primary driver. His work has also analyzed the effects of campaign spending, voter behavior, and the performance of election-denying candidates in elections ^[2].

Online and Web3 Governance

Hall applies his expertise in political economy to the governance of online communities and decentralized technologies. He studies how blockchain-based systems, such as DAOs, use digital voting and cryptoeconomic incentives to manage high-stakes collective decisions. His research in this area includes large-scale experiments on online governance systems, including the use of liquid democracy, where users can delegate their voting power to representatives. This work aims to inform the design of more effective, legitimate, and scalable governance models for Web3 platforms and other digital organizations ^[3].

AI Governance

Hall's research extends to the governance challenges posed by artificial intelligence. His work in this field includes developing methods for measuring and mitigating perceived political slant and bias in large language models (LLMs). This research utilizes user evaluations to create quantitative measures of model behavior, contributing to efforts to make AI systems more aligned and less biased ^[2].

Publications

Hall is the author of multiple books, numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, and public-facing essays on technology and governance. He also authors a weekly newsletter titled "Free Systems: Experiments to Preserve Liberty in an Algorithmic World" ^[2].

Books

• A Democracy in the Sky: Experiments to Govern the Online World (Forthcoming) ^[3]
• Who Wants to Run? How the Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization (2019, University of Chicago Press) ^[4]
• Breaking the Impasse: Electoral Competition, Party-System Change, and the Rise of Partisanship (co-authored) ^[4]

Selected Academic Articles

• "Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms." (Forthcoming, American Political Science Review)
• "How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior?" (2022, American Political Science Review)
• "How Did Absentee Voting Affect the 2020 U.S. Election?" (2021, Science Advances)
• "Universal Vote-by-Mail Has No Impact on Partisan Turnout or Vote Share." (2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
• "Wealth, Slave Ownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War." (2019, American Political Science Review)
• "Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in U.S. Elections." (2018, American Political Science Review)
• "What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries?" (2015, American Political Science Review)
• "On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: Evidence From Over 40,000 Close Races." (2015, American Journal of Political Science)

A selection of Hall's published papers is available on his personal website ^[2].

Public Writing and Essays

• "The web3 Governance Lab" (a16z crypto)
• "Toppling the Internet's Accidental Monarchies: How to Design web3 Platform Governance" (a16z crypto)
• "Lightspeed Democracy: What web3 Organizations Can Learn from the History of Governance" (a16z crypto)
• "Platforms Need to Work with Their Users -- Not Against Them" (Harvard Business Review)
• "What the History of Democracy Can Teach Us About Blockchain Governance" (The Defiant)

A collection of his public-facing articles is listed on his personal website ^[2].