Malte studied economics, management and sociology at the University of Witten/Herdecke and defended his dissertation in economic sociology at ZU Friedrichshafen. In his thesis, Malte developed and operationalized a relational definition of product quality that incorporates the outcomes of non-pecuniary valuation processes on markets into a formal model of market formation and reproduction. This work is the result of a longstanding engagement with the socioeconomic models of production of mathematical sociologist Harrison White. Malte was a Visiting Scholar at the sociology department of Columbia University and at the Network Analysis Center of Duke University, and has visited Stanford University. He has designed and taught university courses on microeconomics, the sociology of markets, and on sociological network theory.