Using the right methods to find out what the data really show.
Matej Opatrny is an economist at the Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, and a researcher at the Charles University Environment Centre. He is a positive economist: whatever the topic, the question is what the evidence actually supports. His toolkit includes meta-analysis, synthetic control, microsimulation and revealed-preference analysis, and his applications range from education, monetary policy and household welfare to energy and agricultural policy. His household microsimulation models provide analytical support to the Czech Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture. Outside academia, he has worked at McKinsey & Company and as an economic analyst at Expobank.
He also knows agricultural policy from the other side of the fence. Together with his parents, his brother and sister-in-law, he runs a small family farm of around 20 hectares in Šumava, where the cows are his own and looking after them is his job. He is married and has two children.
Coming up
Conference
14th Biennial Conference of the Czech Economic Society
Paper accepted · Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE), Prague
Research stay
Research stay at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago
Secondment in the Horizon Europe project M4G, in the group of Prof. Juan-Pablo Montero
Recently
Conference
7th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (WCERE 2026)
Presented “Effects of Agro-Environmental Schemes on Biodiversity Potential” · Lisbon, Portugal
Publication
New estimates of the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption for Europe
Published in Empirical Economics
Publication
Reporting Guidelines for Meta-Analysis in Economics—Updated for AI
Published in the Journal of Economic Surveys
Publication
Volumetric choice experiments and welfare measures in a subsidy-driven context
Published in Resource and Energy Economics
Public engagement
Sciencecon #1: opening talk of the new public science series in Klatovy
“How class size affects student outcomes” · Sciencecon, which he founded, brings researchers working in Czechia to talk directly with the public
Research stay
Research visit to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), Seville
with Milan Ščasný
with Milan Ščasný
with Wiktor Budziński, Mikołaj Czajkowski and 10 others
with Tomáš Havránek, Zuzana Irsova and Milan Ščasný
„Mít názor nestačí.“Having an opinion is not enough.
Researchers working in Czechia talk about their work directly with the public: two 20-minute talks and an open discussion, free entry. The pilot series started in Klatovy in March 2026, with Matej's opening talk on how class size affects pupils' results.
sciencecon.cz
