Dr. Nathan Nunn
Professor, Vancouver School of Economics
University of British Columbia
Curriculum Vitae | Google Scholar
Nathan Nunn is a Professor at the Vancouver School of Economics. His primary research interests are in political economy, economic history, economic development, cultural economics, and international trade. He holds a Canada Research Chair in cultural economics and is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in the Boundaries, Membership & Belonging program, an NBER Faculty Research Fellow, and a Research Fellow at BREAD. He is currently an editor at the Quarterly Journal of Economics.Professor Nunn’s research focuses on the historical and dynamic process of economic development. He studies the factors that shape differences in the evolution of institutions and cultures across societies. His research has examined the historical processes of a wide range of factors crucial for economic development, including distrust, gender norms, religiosity, norms of rule-following, conflict, immigration, state formation, support for democracy, kinship, religious beliefs, and zero-sum thinking.
His research also examines economic development in contemporary contexts, including the effects of Fair Trade certification, CIA interventions during the Cold War, foreign aid, school construction, climate change, and trade policies. He is particularly interested in the importance of the local context (e.g., social structures, traditions, and cultures) for the effectiveness of development policy and in understanding how policy can be optimally designed given the local environment. Along these lines, he has studied the relationship between marriage customs and female education, generalized trust and political turnover, the organization of the extended family (lineage) and conflict, Â traditional local political systems and support for democracy, and agricultural aid and conflict.