Jean-Paul Carvalho

I am an economist working in the fields of political economy and social dynamics. 

Underlying economic performance is the social ecology in which economic and political decisions are made, composed of social norms, culturally transmitted preferences and belief systems, and groups and networks. These social institutions in turn evolve in response to political-economic conditions. I study this co-evolutionary process using models of population dynamics. This leads me to draw upon and contribute to a number of emerging fields, including the economics of identity, the economics of cultural transmission, and the economics of religion.

My work has been applied to the following topics:
 

• Social determinants of education/labor market outcomes
• Structural inequality
• Political economy under diversity
• Economic determinants of religiosity
• Extremism and Conflict

I have also contributed to this research program by co-editing the volume Advances in the Economics of Religion (Palgrave 2019),  and currently serving as Board Member of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture (ASREC), Board Member and Faculty Fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), Core Associate of the Network for Economic Research on Identity, Norms and Narratives (ERINN),  Associate of Theoretical Research in Development Economics (ThReD), and Editorial Advisory Board Member for the Oxford University Press book series on Philosophy, Politics & Economics.

I am Associate Professor of Economics (primary) and Logic & Philosophy of Science (courtesy) at the University of California-Irvine, where I teach game theory and political economy. I have  been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Oxford, NYU, Stanford, and Warwick.

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

• The Economics of Religious Communities (with Michael Sacks), accepted Journal of Public Economics
• Markets and Communities: The Social Cost of the Meritocracy, forthcoming Journal of Institutional Economics
• Elite Identity and Political Accountability: A Tale of Ten Islands (with Christian Dippel), The Economic Journal,  2020, 130, 1995–2029, [Online Appendix] 
• Cultural Transmission and Religion (with Alberto Bisin and Thierry Verdier), forthcoming in Handbook of Economics and Religion, ed. Robert M. Sauer, World Scientific.
• Religion and Terrorism: The Religious Utility Hypothesis forthcoming in Handbook of the Economics of Terrorism, A. Basuchoudhary and G. Schulze (Eds.), Cambridge University Press. 
• Sacrifice and Sorting in Clubs Forum for Social Economics, 2020, 49(4), 357-369. [working paper version]  
• Religious Clubs: The Strategic Role of Religious Identity, in Carvalho, Iyer and Rubin (Eds.), Advances in the Economics of Religion, 2019, Palgrave. 
• Education, Social Mobility and Religious Movements: The Islamic Revival in Egypt (with Christine Binzel). The Economic Journal, 2017, 127, 2553-2580. [working paper version] Online Appendix Press Release
• Coordination and Culture. Economic Theory, 2017, 64(3), 449–475 . [working paper version]
• Education, Identity and Community: Lessons from Jewish Emancipation (with Mark Koyama and Michael Sacks), Public Choice, 2017, 171(1), 119–143. [working paper version]  
• Jewish Emancipation and Schism: Economic Development and Religious Change (with Mark Koyama).  Journal of Comparative Economics, 2016, 44(3), 562-584. [working paper version]
• Identity-Based Organizations. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 2016, 106(5), 410–414. [working paper version]
• Veiling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2013, 128(1), 337-370.
• Instincts and Institutions: The Rise of the Market (with Mark Koyama) in William N. Butos (ed.),  Advances in Austrian Economics, 2010, 13, 285-309.

• Radicalization (with Michael Sacks), revise and resubmit The Economic Journal
• Identity and Underrepresentation: Interactions between Race and Gender  (with Bary Pradelski)
• Resisting Education (with Mark Koyama).  [Under Revision] 

• Advances in the Economics of Religion, co-edited with Sriya Iyer and Jared Rubin, Palgrave 2019.

• The Paths to Narrow Identities: A Comment on Dasgupta and Goyal's 'Narrow Identities', forthcoming in the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
• '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