Matt Van Essen is an economist with a research agenda that focuses on topics in public economics, game theory, and mechanism design. He is originally from Denver, Colorado and earned his PhD in economics from the University of Arizona in 2010. His work in public economics has focused on the incentive problems in the provision of public goods as well as methods to mitigate these problems. Recently, he has focused on problems of fair division in different economic contexts. His work has been published in economic journals such as the Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior, Economic Theory, Social Choice and Welfare, Mathematical Social Science, Economic Inquiry, and the Journal of Public Economic Theory.