Gábor Békés
Vienna · Budapest — Economics & Data Analysis
Gábor Békés is associate professor of economics at Central European University (CEU) in Vienna and senior research fellow at the ELTE KRTK Institute of Economics (Budapest). He is also a research fellow at CEPR and Centro LdA, and an external advisor to the Microsoft AI Economy Institute. He is an applied economist working on firm behavior, international economics, economic geography and organizations, mostly with large firm-, transaction- and person-level microdata. His work has appeared in Management Science, the Journal of International Economics and Economic Policy. With Gábor Kézdi, he wrote the textbook Data Analysis for Business, Economics, and Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He has done policy work for the ECB and the European Commission. He received an MSc in Economics from the LSE in 2000 and his PhD from CEU in 2007. His Data Analysis and AI Lab supports research, produces education materials, and helps link academia and industry.
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Featured
Teaching Analytics in the Age of AI
CEU podcast with Eduardo Ariño de la Rubia (July 2026) on how AI changes what we teach in data analysis, and how. Highlights and transcript.
Listen and read →Ha nem nőnek meg a magyar cégek, itthon verik meg őket a csehek és a lengyelek
Portfolio.hu interview, June 2026 (in Hungarian): restarting a stalled economy, regional expansion as the way out for Hungarian firms, and why AI may widen gaps between countries.
Read on Portfolio →What's new
- Aug 2026 Paper Right-wing terrorism and far-right support: Evidence from anti-Roma attacks in Hungary (with Gábor Simonovits, Attila Gáspár and Márton Végh) published in Political Science Research and Methods, open access.
- Jul 2026 Media Teaching Analytics in the Age of AI — a CEU podcast conversation on AI and teaching data analysis. Episode and transcript.
- Jun 2026 Media Portfolio interview (in Hungarian) on restarting Hungary’s economy, regional expansion for Hungarian firms, and AI: Ha nem nőnek meg a magyar cégek, itthon verik meg őket a csehek és a lengyelek.
- Jun 2026 Media Telex podcast on football as a laboratory for social science — episode and the research behind it.
- Mar 2026 Media Vibe Coding Kills Open Source picked up by the Financial Times, TechTarget, InfoQ and LeadDev.
Research
Journal articles, discussion papers and work in progress are listed in reverse chronological order, each tagged by topic.
Textbook
Data Analysis for Business, Economics, and Policy (with Gábor Kézdi), Cambridge University Press, 2021. Used in courses in more than 40 countries.
Teaching
Data Analysis with AI
Open-access upskilling course for economics and social science students.
Course material →Asking for a recommendation letter? Please read my reference letter policy first.
Recent talks
Press & interviews
Featured in the Boston Globe, Financial Times, Der Standard, and Portfolio. Podcasts and video interviews are on the media page.
Other
Inviting me to dinner? Here is my allium allergy: no onion, garlic or anything else from the onion family, please.