Nathan Nunn (born July 9, 1974) is an economist and Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. [1] He is best known for his research on the long-term effects of slave trade on Africa. His research interests include economic development, cultural economics, political economy and international trade. [2]
A native of Canada, Nathan Nunn earned first a B.A. in economics from Simon Fraser University in 1998 and then a M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Toronto in 2000 and 2005, respectively. After his graduation, Nunn worked as an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia before moving to Harvard University in 2007. There, he was promoted to the Paul Sack Associate Professorship in Political Economy in 2011, became full professor in 2012, and held the position of Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics from 2016 to 2022, prior to returning to the University of British Columbia. Nunn maintains affiliations with NBER, BREAD, and the CEGA. He is currently a Fellow of the Boundaries, Membership & Belonging of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Moreover, Nunn currently serves as an Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and was an Editor of the Journal of Development Economics from 2013 to 2019. He has also been an associate editor at the Journal of Comparative Economics , Review of Economics and Statistics , Journal of International Economics , and the Canadian Journal of Economics in the past. [3]
Nathan Nunn's research focuses on economic history, economic development, cultural economics, political economy and international trade. A recurrent theme in Nunn's research is the long-term impact of historical processes on economic development, often mediated through institutions, culture, knowledge and technology. [4] According to IDEAS/RePEc, Nathan Nunn belongs to the 2% of most cited economists. [5] Key findings of his research include the following:
Sendhil Mullainathan is an American professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the author of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. He was hired with tenure by Harvard in 2004 after having spent six years at MIT.
Fabrizio Zilibotti is an Italian economist. He is the Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics at Yale University. Zilibotti was previously professor of economics at University College London, the University of Zürich, and at the Institute for International Economic Studies in Stockholm.
Geography and wealth have long been perceived as correlated attributes of nations. Scholars such as Jeffrey D. Sachs argue that geography has a key role in the development of a nation's economic growth. For instance, nations that reside along coastal regions, or those who have access to a nearby water source, are more plentiful and able to trade with neighboring nations. In addition, countries that have a tropical climate face a significant amount of difficulties such as disease, intense weather patterns, and lower agricultural productivity. This thesis is supported by the fact that the volumes of UV radiation have a negative impact on economic activity. There are a number of studies confirming that spatial development in countries with higher levels of economic development differs from countries with lower levels of development. The correlation between geography and a nation's wealth can be observed by examining a country's GDP per capita, which takes into account a nation's economic output and population.
Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. Here, 'culture' is defined by shared beliefs and preferences of respective groups. Programmatic issues include whether and how much culture matters as to economic outcomes and what its relation is to institutions. As a growing field in behavioral economics, the role of culture in economic behavior is increasingly being demonstrated to cause significant differentials in decision-making and the management and valuation of assets.
Alberto Francesco Alesina was an Italian political economist. Considered one of the most cited supporters of austerity policies in the 2000s, he wrote about economics and political science.
Leonard Wantchekon is a Beninese economist and professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and an affiliate of the Economics Department at Princeton University. He taught at Yale University (1995–2001) and New York University (2001–2011). He is the founding director of the African School of Economics, which is based in Benin. His study with Nathan Nunn on the impact of slave trading on modern-day trust is among the most-cited studies in economics.
Edward "Ted" Andrew Miguel is the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Economics at University of California, Berkeley, US. He is the founder and faculty director of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at U.C. Berkeley.
Marianne Bertrand is a Belgian economist who currently works as Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Willard Graham Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Bertrand belongs to the world's most prominent labour economists in terms of research, and has been awarded the 2004 Elaine Bennett Research Prize and the 2012 Sherwin Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Labor Economics. She is a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.
Ebonya L. Washington is the Laurans A. and Arlene Mendelson Professor of Economics at Columbia University and a professor of public and international affairs. She is also a National Bureau of Economic Research Faculty Research Fellow in the Programs on Political Economy and the Economics of Children. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021.
Nina Pavcnik is the Niehaus Family Professor in International Studies for the Economics Department at Dartmouth College.
Emi Nakamura is a Canadian-American economist. She is the Chancellor's Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Nakamura is a research associate and co-director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a co-editor of the American Economic Review.
Hoyt Bleakley is an economist who currently works as an associate professor at the University of Michigan. His research has focused on economic history, development economics, labour economics, health economics, and international macroeconomics.
Nancy Qian is a Chinese American economist and currently serves as the James J. O'Connor Professor in the Kellogg School of Management Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences and a Professor by Courtesy at the Department of Economics at Northwestern University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy and economic history. She is a leading development economist and an expert of autocracies and the Chinese economy.
Eliana La Ferrara is an Italian economist and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Before receiving tenure at Harvard in 2022, she held the Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, where she also acted as Scientific Director of the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Programs (LEAP). Previously, she was also the president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) as well as the president of the European Economic Association. In terms of research, her fields of interest include development economics, political economy, and public economics.
Joseph J. Doyle Jr. is a U.S. American economist and the Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on the public economics of healthcare and child welfare. He currently serves as co-director of the MIT Sloan Initiative for Health Systems Innovation and as co-chair of the Health Sector of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln is a German economist and currently holds the Chair for Macroeconomics and Development at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research has been awarded the Gossen Prize in 2016 and the Leibniz Prize in 2018. The Leibniz award is considered to be one of the highest scientific awards in all of Germany.
Murat Iyigun is an American and Turkish scholar and author in the field of the economics of family, economic development, political economy and cliometrics. He is a professor at the University of Colorado.
Jón Steinsson is Chancellor's Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley, a research associate and co-director of the Monetary Economics program of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and associate editor of both American Economic Review: Insights, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard and his AB from Princeton.
Paola Giuliano is an economist and currently the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair in Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Yu-Chin Chen is an economist and researcher at the University of Washington. Her research fields include international finance, macroeconomics, open economy macroeconomics, trade and development, and applied economics. She has served as a staff economist for the Clinton administration and is currently an economics professor at the University of Washington. Classes she teaches include Macroeconomic Analysis, International Financial Monetary Economics, and Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics.