Jean-Paul Carvalho

I am an Economist at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford University Business Economics  Programme (OUBEP). My work in the fields of Political Economy and Social Dynamics focuses on the institutional factors behind economic performance.  

Growth and development can be disrupted by political dysfunction, social conflict, and barriers to developing human capabilities.  My work deepens our understanding of these institutional risk factors using new economic models and sources of data. It has also inspired me to study foundational issues, including how preferences, beliefs, and norms are formed.  

Applications  of my work include: (1) the political-economic risks of AI, (2) policies for boosting economic integration by cultural minorities, and  (3) counter-radicalization measures.

I am Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of New College.  At Oxford, I co-founded the Political Economy seminar.

Previously,  I was Associate Professor at the University of California-Irvine in the  Department of Economics and the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral  Sciences, which I directed from 2017-2019. I have been a visiting  scholar at Harvard, Stanford, NYU, and Warwick. 

I was educated at the University of Oxford (DPhil, MPhil, Monash scholar) and the University of Western Australia.

The Political-Economic Risks of AI

Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

Zero-Sum Environments, the Evolution of Effort-Suppressing Beliefs, and Economic Development

with Augustin Bergeron, Joseph Henrich, Nathan Nunn, Jonathan Weigel

Revise and resubmit, Review of Economic Studies

Modeling Social Institutions

Prepared for The Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior, Eds. Ben Enke, Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn, and Leonard Wantchekon

[coming soon]

Intersectionality: Affirmative Action with Multidimensional Identities 

with Bary Pradelski and Cole Williams

Management Science, Forthcoming

[working paper version]

The Representation Dynamic and the 'Normalization' of Group Differences 

with Bary Pradelski

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Forthcoming

[working paper version]

Resisting Education 

with Mark Koyama and Cole Williams

Journal of the European Economic Association 22(6), 2024, 2549-2597.

[working paper version]

Radicalisation

with Michael Sacks

The Economic Journal 134(659), 2024, 1019-1068.

[working paper version]

Failed Secular Revolutions: Religious Belief, Competition, and Extremism

with Jared Rubin and Michael Sacks

Public Choice, 2023.

[working paper version]

Cultural Transmission and Religion 

with Alberto Bisin and Thierry Verdier

The Economics of Religion (ed. R. Sauer), 2023. World Scientific. 

Identity and Underrepresentation: Interactions between Race and Gender 

with Bary Pradelski

Journal of Public Economics 216, 2022.

[working paper version]

Markets and Communities: The Social Cost of the Meritocracy

Journal of Institutional Economics 18(3), 2022,  501-519.

[working paper version]

The Formation of Religious Beliefs and Preferences 

with Michael McBride

Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (ed. K.F. Zimmerman), 2022, Springer.

The Economics of Religious Communities 

with Michael Sacks

Journal of Public Economics 201, 2021. 

[working paper version]

Elite Identity and Political Accountability: A Tale of Ten Islands 

with Christian Dippel

The Economic Journal 130,  2020, 1995–2029.

[Online Appendix] 

Religion and Terrorism: The Religious Utility Hypothesis 

Handbook of the Economics of Terrorism (eds. A. Basuchoudhary and G. Schulze), forthcoming, Cambridge University Press.

Sacrifice and Sorting in Clubs 

Forum for Social Economics 49(4), 2020, 357-369. 

[working paper version]  

Religious Clubs: The Strategic Role of Religious Identity, 

Advances in the Economics of Religion (eds: Carvalho, Iyer and Rubin), 2019, Palgrave. 

Education, Social Mobility and Religious Movements: The Islamic Revival in Egypt 

with Christine Binzel

The Economic Journal 127, 2017, 2553-2580. 

[working paper version] [Online Appendix]

Coordination and Culture. 

Economic Theory 64(3), 2017, 449–475 . 

[working paper version]

Education, Identity and Community: Lessons from Jewish Emancipation with Mark Koyama and Michael Sacks

Public Choice 171(1), 2017, 119–143. 

[working paper version]  

Jewish Emancipation and Schism: Economic Development and Religious Change 

with Mark Koyama

Journal of Comparative Economics 44(3), 2016, 562-584. 

[working paper version]

Identity-Based Organizations. 

American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 106(5), 2016, 410–414. [working paper version]

Veiling. 

Quarterly Journal of Economics 128(1), 2013, 337-370.

Instincts and Institutions: The Rise of the Market 

with Mark Koyama

Advances in Austrian Economics 13, 2010, 285-309.

Advances in the Economics of Religion

Co-edited with Sriya Iyer and Jared Rubin

Palgrave 2019.

Intersectional Affirmative Action 

with Bary Pradelski and Cole Williams

VoxEU, 16 November 2022 . 

The Paths to Narrow Identities: A Comment on Dasgupta and Goyal's 'Narrow Identities'

Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 14(2), 2022,  77–86. 

[working paper version]

'What Should an Economist Know?'

 IEA World Congress, July 2021

Norms of Identity

Slides from the ERINN Social Norms Workshop, Nuffield College Oxford, June 2019

An Interview with Thomas Schelling

Oxonomics, May 2007

Course in Evolution and Learning in Games

Syllabus 

Lectures

1. The Rational Agent and Its Limitations
2. The Interactive Knowledge Problem
3. Social Learning
4. Evolution in Games
5. Learning Protocols
6. Deterministic Dynamics
7. Evolutionary Stability
8. Local Stability
9. Cultural Transmission
10. Stochastic Dynamics
11. Stochastic Stability
12. Emergence of Segregation
13. Adaptive Play
14. Bargaining Conventions
15. Games Played on Networks
16. Heterogeneous Agents
17. Fast Convergence

Religion & Cultural Transmission (ASREC Grad Workshop)

Lecture

Note on Replicator Dynamic