Ilan Strauss

Ilan Strauss, (born 1985), is an economist best known for his work on digital platforms and market power, focusing on the role of algorithms in mediating information quality. He is senior research associate at University College London, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, where he leads their digital economy research team, sponsored by the Omidyar Network. He is a visiting associate professor at the University of Johannesburg (office of the Sarchl Chair). He previously taught macroeconomics at New York University (Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies) and at Rice University's online MBA (Jones Graduate School of Business).

His work has been featured in the popular press: in Financial Times by Rana Foroohar, by Cory Doctorow, and published in Project Syndicate with Mariana Mazzucato.

Early life and education
He holds an Ms.C (first class) from SOAS in Development Economics and a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research, during which time he also studied Bayesian Statistics at Columbia University under Andrew Gelman.

Early career
Ilan initially worked in the non-profit sector, working for the Jewish summer camp organization Habonim Dror Southern Africa, before being involved with non-profits in Cape Town townships (the Social Justice Coalition and Equal Education).

Ilan started out his career in development economics, working at the African Development Bank's research department in Tunisia, before consulting for United Nation bodies, including writing the Africa section of UNCTAD's World Investment Report. He has written several papers and book chapters on foreign direct investment, published with Columbia University and UNCTAD's Transnational Corporation. He consulted on the impacts of COVID on African economies for several regional bodies between 2020 and 2021.

Present work
As part of a multi-year, Omidyar Network funded, research project, Ilan has worked closely with Tim O’Reilly and Professor Mariana Mazzucato at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, focusing on the role of algorithms in platform's leveraging their digital market power. This research was published in a series of papers under the title: algorithmic attention rents. His other branch of research at UCL focused on the nature and role of disclosures for digital platforms in regulating Big Tech.

Ilan has been an economics commentator on the South African economy. He was on the board of the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative, which helped establish the first national minimum wage in South Africa.

He is a member of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research.

Awards and honours
Ilan is the receipt of an Economic Security Project grant (jointly with Dr. Jangho Yang) looking at the role of acquisitions in Big Tech attaining dominance in artificial intelligence (AI) innovation.