Matt Hopkins is as a senior researcher for the Academic-Industry Research Network, (AIRnet) a 501(c)(3) non-profit research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 2012, he has worked at AIRnet, collaborating with colleagues on a range of issues related to corporate governance, innovation, and industrial performance. In December 2023 he completed his PhD in Economics at SOAS University of London. His thesis was “Strategic Control and the Role of Executive Compensation in the Innovation or Financialization of Firms”. His current research into the electric vehicle industry is being funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. His papers and publications can be found on the websites of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Harvard Business Review, the Oxford University Press, and media outlets such as the Atlantic and Huffington Post.

Matt’s research interests include the innovation process, the finance of innovation, executive compensation, government-business collaboration, and the national and global dynamics of industrial development. He holds a Master’s degree from the former Department of Regional Economic and Social Development at UMass Lowell, where he was named the department’s graduate student of the year in 2010. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree with a double major in Economics and English from the University of Southern Maine.

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The U.S. battery maker that could, and the U.S. auto company that wouldn’t

Article | Sep 13, 2026

General Motors once had the technology, talent, and partnership to lead the electric-vehicle revolution. Instead, it abandoned the EV1 and its battery venture while pouring billions into stock buybacks, helping turn an early American lead into decades of technological dependence.

The Asian Battery Companies Charging the EV Transition

Paper Working paper | | Aug 2026

America helped pioneer the electric-vehicle revolution, yet today no major EV battery maker is based in the United States. Asia’s dominance reveals how sustained investment, organizational capabilities, and America’s embrace of shareholder value reshaped the global race for a critical technology.

Elon Musk’s latest power grab: Will Tesla’s CEO become the world’s first trillion-dollar employee?

Article | Nov 7, 2025

Elon Musk secured shareholder approval for a new stock-based package designed to double his voting power at Tesla, potentially making him the first trillion-dollar employee. As this plan cements Musk’s control it ties vesting to audacious market-cap and production targets and diverts focus from progressive value creation. Musk’s governance, layoffs, and politicization could imperil Tesla’s EV leadership and ambitions in AI and robotics.

Musk and Tesla: Corporate Compensation, Financialization, and the Problem of Strategic Control

Article | Sep 13, 2024

From the perspective of innovative enterprise, we ask how Musk might abuse his power of strategic control—and what that would mean for corporate governance reform.

Featuring this expert

Economists Warn: Trump’s Intel Move Looks Like Performance, Not Policy

Article | Aug 26, 2025

Two economists who have studied Intel warn that Trump’s move to take a stake in the company amounts to flashy optics, incoherent strategy, and a creeping politicization of economic policy.

INET working paper on how maximizing shareholder value led to minimizing national interests is cited in The American Prospect

News Dec 7, 2020

“If companies continue to prioritize maximizing shareholder wealth at the expense of other key stakeholders, and at the expense of investing in innovation, then the Green New Deal could reinforce long-standing income and wealth inequities and the decline in innovation in the U.S. economy (for an important example, Bill Lazonick and Matt Hopkins document how maximizing shareholder value minimized the strategic national stockpile for ventilators and personal protective equipment).” —Lenore M Palladino