Jean-Paul Carvalho

I am an Economist at the University of Oxford working in the fields of Political Economy, Game Theory, and Social Dynamics.

The unifying theme of my work is the social embeddedness of the economy. I have made contributions to understanding how economic activity (e.g., education, work) is shaped by social institutions such as norms, identities, and belief systems. I have also shown how policies that ignore the connections between economy and society can fail. This work has led me to reexamine some of the foundations of economic models, including where preferences come from and why people might continue to hold and even benefit from incorrect beliefs.

Applications of my work include the design of: (1) fair algorithms, (2) policies for boosting social integration and economic participation by cultural minorities, and (3) counter-radicalization measures.

I am Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow of New College. Previously, I was Associate Professor at the University of California-Irvine in the Department of Economics and the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences. 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.

Publications

Resisting Education

with Mark Koyama and Cole Williams

Journal of the European Economic Association, Forthcoming

Radicalisation

with Michael Sacks

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

Failed Secular Revolutions: Religious Belief, Competition, and Extremism

with Jared Rubin and Michael Sacks

Public Choice, 2023.

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]

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.

Working Papers

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

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

Affirmative Action with Multidimensional Identities

with Bary Pradelski and Cole Williams

revise and resubmit Management Science.

The Representation Dynamic and the 'Normalization' of Group Differences

with Bary Pradelski

Conditionally accepted Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization.

Books/Edited Volumes

Advances in the Economics of Religion

Co-edited with Sriya Iyer and Jared Rubin

Palgrave 2019.

Other

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