Matthias Mertens
Research Scientist at Future Tech
Matthias Mertens is a research scientist at MIT FutureTech who conducts research at the intersection of Industrial Organization and Labor Economics. His primary focus includes analyzing firm productivity, market power, wage determinants, and reallocation processes.
Currently, Matthias studies the impacts of information technology advancements on firm productivity and labor markets. Matthias holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. He also possesses a master’s degree in Business Law and Economic Law from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. He successfully completed a Ph.D. program at the Halle Institute for Economic Research and obtained his Ph.D. from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg.
Before joining MIT FutureTech, Matthias served as Head of Research Group at the Halle Institute for Economic Research and as the Coordinator of the Scientific Staff at the Competitiveness Research Network, where he led the data collection team responsible for constructing the CompNet database for several years.
Recent Insights
Featured publications
May 15, 2026
- Neil Thompson | Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management and CSAIL
- Matthias Mertens | Research Scientist at Future Tech
Do leading LLM developers possess a proprietary “secret sauce,” or is LLM performance driven by scaling up compute? Using training and benchmark data for 809 models released between 2022 and 2025, the authors estimate scaling-law regressions with release-date and developer fixed effects.
April 15, 2026
- Neil Thompson | Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management and CSAIL
- Martin Fleming | Research Scientist, IDE
- Matthias Mertens | Research Scientist at Future Tech
- Brittany Harris | Data Analyst, CSAIL
- Wensu Li | Postdoctoral Associate
The authors propose that AI automation is a continuum between: crashing waves where AI capabilities surge abruptly over small sets of tasks, and rising tides where the increase in AI capabilities is more continuous and broad-based.