James Hamilton

James T. (Jay) Hamilton is interim faculty co-director of Stanford Impact Labs where he provides overall leadership and strategic guidance, with a special focus on journalism and on public policy. 

The Hearst Professor of Communication and director of the Stanford Journalism Program in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), Jay has been appointed vice provost for undergraduate education, effective January 2025.

Jay is an economist who studies how information provision changes behavior by individuals, companies, and governments. His work has focused on environmental justice, the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory program, the market for television violence, and the economics of public affairs reporting.

Jay’s research in the field of computational journalism explores how the costs of story discovery can be reduced through better use of data and algorithms. Through his work at the Stanford Journalism Program, he encourages partnerships between media organizations and universities to support accountability reporting. His book, Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Reporting, examines the market for investigative news. His current research explores how income inequality affects information inequality.

Jay is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). When he is not thinking about the role of journalism in democracy, he enjoys reading histories of the 1960s, watching political dramas set in Washington DC, and consuming popular culture while maintaining this counts as “research.”