Natalia Lamberova

I am an applied political economist at the University of Texas at Dallas. I study how political institutions, governments, and public preferences shape innovation, information, and technological change. My work combines formal theory with causal inference, experiments, and original data to examine the political foundations of technology and public policy.

Across this research, I ask why governments support some forms of innovation, how institutions affect the quality and direction of technological change, and how citizens interpret information and evaluate long-term public investments.

Featured research

Information Manipulation and Repression: Theory and Evidence from the COVID-19 Response in Russia

With Konstantin Sonin. Journal of Public Economics, 262 (2026), 105740. The paper studies how information manipulation and repression operate together under authoritarian rule, using evidence from 83 Russian regions. PDF · DOI

The Paradox of Government-Funded Innovation in Weakly Institutionalized Environments

Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 9(3) (2024), 100536. The paper examines why public support for research can increase patenting while reducing the quality of innovation when institutions provide weak oversight. PDF · DOI

The Puzzling Politics of R&D: Signaling Competence through Risky Projects

Journal of Comparative Economics, 49(3) (2021), 801–818. The paper shows how support for risky, long-term R&D projects can signal political competence before the projects produce results, combining a formal model with survey experiments in the United States and Russia and cross-national evidence. PDF · DOI

See Publications for peer-reviewed work, Research for current research programs, and Research Beyond Publications for research infrastructure, mentoring, and institutional initiatives.