Profile Information

Profile

Patrick L. Warren is Professor of Economics at Clemson University and Co-Director of the Media Forensics Hub. He has been at Clemson since 2008 and works at the intersection of economics, organizations, and information integrity.

His research examines how organizations operate in the economy, including firms, bureaucracies, political parties, and information operations. More recent work focuses on coordinated disinformation, media forensics, and public resilience to manipulation online.

Before Clemson, he earned a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT (2008) and a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from the South Carolina Honors College (2001). He has also held visiting appointments at Northwestern (Kellogg) and RAND.

He has served as Associate Editor of Public Finance Review, on the SIOE/ISNIE board, and as a technical advisor to public-sector organizations on foreign influence and information operations.

Research Interests

• Political economy and the economics of organizations.

Research Publications

• "Fact-Checks Can Help Inoculate LLMs Against Disinformation" with M Wack, EM Vogel, C Pipal, OSF
• "System and method for social media authenticity analysis and coordinated influence detection" with D Linvill, US Patent App. 19/330,697
• "The Laziness of the Crowd: Effort Aversion Among Raters Risks Undermining the Efficacy of X's Community Notes Program" with M Wack and M Alam, arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.11120
• "Hungary for more? Russian Storm-1516 narratives and engagement tactics targeting Hungary’s 2026 parliamentary election" with E Murray and D Linvill
• "Operation Overload-Matryoshka's Next Layer" with L Fecher, L Adams, BB Fonseca, K Gilbert, and A Gubanich
• "A New Brood: The Return of China's Green Cicada" with E Murray and DL Linvill
• "Managing Shared Understandings in Teams" with P Niennattrakul and T Wilkening
• "Responsible Service Management" in a Post-Truth Era: Curating Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (TAI) in Service 4.0 with YG Cui
• "Basic Income and the Dynamics of Employment and Human Capital in a Non-Urban Disadvantaged Setting" with JL García and LR Watson, National Bureau of Economic Research
• "Generative propaganda: Evidence of AI’s impact from a state-backed disinformation campaign" with M Wack, C Ehrett, D Linvill, PNAS nexus 4 (4), pgaf083 47 2025
• "Unsupervised detection of coordinated information operations in the wild" with DH Smith, C Ehrett, EPJ Data Science 14 (1), 26, 18
• "Only Skin Deep AI Lifestyle Accounts Influencing Political Discourse" with L Fecher, P Warren, K Gilbert, E Murray, M Rockow, JJH Yoo
• "Understanding Discrimination in College Admissions: A Field Experiment" with V Melo, H Vaca Pereira Rocha, L Sigaud, SM Gaddis, Available at SSRN 4973199, 2024.
• "Paths to influence: How coordinated influence operations affect the prominence of ideas"
• with D Linvill Corporate Cancel Culture and Brand Boycotts, 100-121, 6* 2024
• "Writers of the Storm: Who's Behind the Ongoing Production of Pro-Russian False Narratives"
• with D Linvill, S Sheffield, L Fecher, K Gilbert, J Greco, A Gubanich 2024
• "Hub Brief: Spamouflage Targeting of US Senator Marco Rubio" with D Linvill 2024
• "Digital yard signs: Analysis of an ai bot political influence campaign on X" with D Linvill, 2024
• "What’s Hiding Under the Kilt? Iranian Trolls for Scottish Independence" with
• D Linvill, 2024
• "Where do trolls say they are? Understanding the use of place claims in nation state influence operations" with D Linvill, J Warren, D White
• International Journal of Public Opinion Research 36 (3), edae022, 4, 2024
• "Old despots, new tricks-an AI-empowered pro-Kagame/RPF coordinated influence network on X" with M Wack and D Linvill (2024)
• "My Heart Returns to Kashmir: The Ongoing Conflict Between India and Pakistan in the Kasmiri Information Environment" with A Colaianni, et al, 2024
• 2023
• "Firearms and Lynching" with Michael D. Makowsky. Journal of Law and Economics., May, 2023.
• "The Spot the Troll Quiz Game Increases Accuracy in Discerning Between Real and Inauthentic Social Media Accounts" with Jeff Lees, John Banas, Darren Linvill, and Patrick Meirick. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science - Nexus., April, 2023.
• "Talking to Trolls—How Users Respond to a Coordinated Information Operation and Why They’re So Supportive" with Darren Linvill and Amanda Moore Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, January, 2022.
• "Inauthentic Newsfeeds and Agenda Setting in a Coordinated Inauthentic Information Operation" with Carl Ehrett, Darren L. Linvill, Hudson Smith, Leya Bellamy, Marianna Moawad, Olivia Moran, Monica Moody. Social Science Computer Review., June, 2021.
• "Engaging with others: How the IRA coordinated information operation made friends." with Darren L. Linvill. The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review., April, 2020.
• "Troll Factories: Manufacturing Specialized Disinformation on Twitter" with Darren Linvill. Journal of Political Communication, February, 2020).
• "An Equilibrium Theory of Retirement Plan Design" with Ryan Bubb. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May, 2020.
• "The Russians are Hacking My Brain!” Investigating Russia’s Internet Research Agency Twitter Tactics during the 2016 United States Presidential Campaign." with Darren Linvill, Brandon Boatwright, and Will Grant. Computers in Human Behavior, October, 2019.
• "Cost versus Control: Understanding Ownership Through Outsourcing in Hospitals" with Christina Marsh Dalton Journal of Health Economics, July, 2016.
• "A Behavioral Contract Theory Perspective on Retirement Savings" with Ryan Bubb and Patrick Corrigan Connecticut Law Review, July, 2015.
• "The Political Economy of Regulation in Markets with Naive Consumers" with Dan Wood Journal of the European Economic Association, December, 2014.
• "Contracting Officer Workload, Endogenously Incomplete Contracting, and Contractual Terms: Theory and Evidence" Rand Journal of Economics, Summer, 2014.
• "Sunshine as Disinfectant: The Effect of State Freedom of Information Act Laws on Public Corruption" with Adriana Cordis Journal of Public Economics, July, 2014.
• "Optimal Agency Bias and Regulatory Review" with Ryan Bubb Journal of Legal Studies, January, 2014.
• "Party Politics, Governors, and Economic Policy" with Per Fredrikkson and Le Wang Southern Economic Journal, July, 2013.
• "Regulatory Fog: The Role of Information in Regulatory Persistence" with Tom S. Wilkening Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, December, 2012.
• "Volunteer Militaries, The Draft, and Support for War" Economics and Politics, November, 2012.
• "Allies and Adversaries: The Roles of Appointees in Administrative Policymaking in a Separation of Powers System Third Party Auditors and Electoral Accountability" Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization , August, 2012.
• "Independent Auditors, Bias, and Political Agency" Journal of Public Economics, Jan.-Feb., 2012.

Links

• Media Forensics Hub