Marshall W. Van Alstyne (born March 28, 1962)is an American academic and researcher whose work focuses on the economics of information, digital platforms, and market design. He is a professor of information systems at Boston University and has held affiliated research appointments at Harvard Law School, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Stanford University. His work focuses on the economics of information. This includes a sustained interest in information markets and in how information and technology affect productivity with an emphasis on âÂÂplatformsâ as an extension of the work on two-sided markets.
Marshall Van Alstyne was born in Columbus, Ohio. He received a B.A. in Computer Science from Yale UniversityÃÂ in 1984. He then worked as a software systems developer at Martin Marietta Data Systems in Colorado and later as associate staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Massachusetts, before undertaking graduate study. He obtained his M.S in management in 1991 and Ph.D. in Information Systems and Economics in 1998, both at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Van Alstyne has held academic appointments in information systems, economics, and digital policy across several major research universities.
He joined Boston University in 2004, where he was appointed Assistant Professor, promoted to Associate Professor in 2008, and to Full Professor in 2015. He has also held the Allen & Kelli Questrom Professorship in Information Systems since 2018 and served as Chair of the Information Systems Department from 2015 to 2020. At Boston University, his research has focused on network economics, digital platforms, intellectual property and data rights, misinformation, and antitrust, and he has taught courses in information economics, platforms, and strategy in both the in-person and the online MBA programs. He also co-founded and led the schoolâÂÂs Platform Symposium beginning in 2012.
In addition to his primary appointment, Van Alstyne has held multiple affiliated research roles. Since 2024, he has been a Faculty Associate and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, with research sponsored by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. His work there focuses on free speech, misinformation, social media governance, Section 230, and legal reform.
He has also served as a Digital Fellow at Stanford University since 2020, with research sponsored by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, where his work addresses platforms, information economics, data rights, misinformation, antitrust, and artificial intelligence governance.
He is the co-author of Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You. The book describes the information technologies, standards, and rules that make up platforms, and are used and developed by the biggest and most innovative global companies. Forbes included it among 16 must-read business books for 2016, describing it as "a practical guide to the new business model that is transforming the way we work and live."
He is the son of constitutional law scholar William Van Alstyne.
An early life foray into film found him cast in the movie Cocktail but turned it down for academic pursuits. The part was then given to emerging actor Tom Cruise.