Matthew C. Weinzierl

Your guide--using the compelling stories of changemakers and the tools of economics--to the transformation and future possibilities of the business and economics of space. Harvard Business Review Press, 2025. View Details

"Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation."  Tax Policy and the Economy 35 (2021). View Details

"Revisiting the Classical View of Benefit-Based Taxation." (pdf) Economic Journal 128, no. 612 (July 2018): F37–F64. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 14-101, April 2014.) View Details

"The Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax Is Irrelevant for Its (Benefit-Based) Justification." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29547, December 2021. View Details

"Real Growth in Space Manufacturing Output Substantially Exceeds Growth in the Overall Space Economy." Acta Astronautica 219 (June 2024): 236–242. View Details

"Your Company Needs a Space Strategy. Now." Harvard Business Review (November–December 2022): 80–91. View Details

More on the Economics and Business of Space

HBS has a thriving community focused on space, with a robust alumni network in the sector and a group of faculty and staff researching and teaching about it. Below, we list faculty and staff members of this community and some of their research. If you have questions about research on the business and economics of space at HBS, please contact Prof. Weinzierl at mweinzierl@hbs.edu

Faculty + Staff

Jeffrey J. Bussgang | Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit

Carissa Christensen | Entrepreneur in Residence, Rock Center for Entrepreneurship

Thomas R. Eisenmann | Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration

Tarun Khanna | Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor

Josh Krieger | Associate Professor of Business Administration

Karim R. Lakhani | Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration 

Alan MacCormack | MBA Class of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration

Jim Matheson | Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

Matt Weinzierl | Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration

Krieger, Joshua Lev, Jim Matheson, Fiona Murray, and David Allen. "Fly, Fix, Fly at True Anomaly." Harvard Business School Case 825-040, February 2025. 

Krieger, Joshua Lev, Abhishek Nagaraj, and James Barnett. "Tomorrow.io Goes to Space." Harvard Business School Case 822-005, January 2022.

Thomas R. Eisenmann, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, and David Lane. 1/7/2019. “Analytical Space: The Next Frontier?” Harvard Business School Case #819-089.

Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Karim Lakhani, and Rachna Tahilyani. 4/9/2018. “ISRO: Explore Space or Exploit CubeSats?” Harvard Business School Case #617-062. 

Ramana Nanda and Matthew Weinzierl. 11/28/2016. “Financing Astroscale.” Harvard Business School Case #817-025.

Alan MacCormack. Management Lessons from Mars. Harvard Business Review, 82, 5, Pp. 1-2. 5/2004.

Thomas R. Eisenmann. 3/1/2002. “Satellite Radio.” Harvard Business School Case #802-175. 

Thomas Eisemann, Dan Green, and Doug Rogers. 1/22/2002. “Teledesic.” Harvard Business School Case #802-145.

Alan MacCormack and Jay Wynn. 1/18/2002. “Space Data Corp.” Harvard Business School #602-121. 

Alan D MacCormack and Kerry Herman. 12/6/2000. “Rise and Fall of Iridium.” Harvard Business School Case #601-040.

My academic research centers on uncovering and closing gaps between the theory and reality of tax policy. My main contribution has been to identify and address a mismatch between the goals for taxation typically assumed in theory and the goals the public and policymakers endorse in reality. In brief, in the academic literature tax policy is evaluated solely by where we all end up, but in reality people also care about how we get there. To narrow this gap I have developed an approach to tax research I call Positive Optimal Taxation. This approach includes three steps: 1) gathering evidence that the goals for taxation assumed in standard theory fit poorly with real-world views; 2) identifying alternative goals—and the philosophical principles behind them—that better describe those real-world views; 3) incorporating those alternative goals into formal modern tax theory and demonstrating that doing so enables us to better explain, and inform, policy.

Consider, for example, the debate over how much to tax the rich. My research has shown that most people think the rich should pay more in taxes not only (and perhaps not even primarily) because a dollar is worth less in the hands of someone with more, the reason assumed in modern tax theory. Instead, they think the rich should pay more also because that's how the rich pay their fair share of the costs of a functioning society or because the rich have benefited more from that society's functioning, views consistent with the Equal Sacrifice principle of taxation that was endorsed by John Stuart Mill and the Classical Benefit-Based Taxation principle put forth by Adam Smith.

Most people, in fact, see merit in a range of potential views on this question and use a mixture of principles when making their judgments, an approach I call “normative diversity.” That approach strikes most of us as a good description of real-world moral reasoning, especially in a democracy, but it is sharply at odds with the standard approach in tax theory. My research shows not only that this conflict exists but also that it can be overcome. That is, modern tax theory can be adjusted to include normative diversity, and the payoff from doing so—in terms of the theory’s power to help us understand actual policy choices—is real.

In the end, I hope that this research succeeds in making my fellow tax theorists think differently about what they assume are the goals of tax policy, changing how tax theory is done and what impact it can have.

Additional strands of my academic research share the same motivation: to bring the study of tax policy into closer contact with practice. I have shown how taking into account differences in preferences across people—which public debates over taxes have always included but which modern research largely assumes away—brings theoretical policy recommendations more in line with existing policy. And, I have shown how to use complex modern theory to suggest simple reforms and guidelines for taxation and fiscal policy, rather than the intricate and sometimes impractical proposals those models most directly imply.

Like my academic research, my course development work for HBS helps us to understand why societies choose the economic policies they do, and how they might do better. Most of this work is included in my elective course: The Role of Government in Market Economies (RoGME). RoGME follows in the tradition of decades of pedagogy at HBS, providing the nuanced perspective on the role of government that is essential for the future leaders we train to maximize the positive difference they will make in the world. Whether the topic is reform of public education, coordination on climate change, management of the national debt, regulation of immigration, or the design of taxes, we find our way to a discussion of not only what the key tradeoffs are but also how to think about making them. In the end, aided by the unique power of the case method to make abstract questions tangible and fundamental disagreements plain, RoGME students come to see debates over specific policy issues as examples of a deeper, more analytically useful tension between competing views of the proper role of the government.

RoGME is about one question: What is the proper role of government in market economies? We study the role of government as it plays out in the real world, using case studies to examine policies of current interest and importance. We align these cases with a rigorous theoretical framework that clarifies the circumstances under which government intervention in the market can improve outcomes. And we look beyond that textbook framework, mining the richness of the cases for additional layers of insight. Key to this effort is a focus on perhaps RoGME’s central lesson: to really understand a policy, you must know what its objective really is.

Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it is in the midst of a revolution. In this course, we will learn about this revolution and the companies, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom, Planet, and more. We will be joined by leaders in the industry, including alumni, eager to help you join them in building a new space age with the private sector as its engine. We will learn about the history of civilian space agencies like NASA and of the military in space, and we will debate their role in the future. We will study the economics underlying the sector, where public-private linkages are deep and essential. And we will ask ourselves, and our guests, what animates our interest in space and justifies devoting time, effort, and resources to it. The course curriculum is based around Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier, a book authored by Prof. Weinzierl and his former research associate (and this course’s inaugural teaching fellow) Brendan Rosseau.

Course Objectives

• Develop an informed view on the history of and recent dramatic changes in how the space sector functions, including the evolving relationship between public and private actors.
• Consider and evaluate different forecasts for the further development of the space sector, including space-for-earth and space-for-space activities in LEO, cislunar, Mars, and other areas of operation.
• Identify feasible ways of regulating and governing decentralized space activities, including the establishment of property rights, through existing or new institutions.
• Understand one’s own vision for space and be able to explain why it is worth pursuing.