Rachel Kranton  James B. Duke Professor of Economics, Duke University

Rachel Kranton studies how institutions and the social setting affect economic outcomes.  She develops theories of networks and has introduced identity into economic thinking.  Her research contributes to many fields including microeconomics, economic development, and industrial organization.

Rachel Kranton is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, a fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, and was awarded a Chaire Blaise Pascal.  She has served on the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association and on the Editorial Boards of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Literature and as a Managing Editor of the Economic Journal. She is launching, along with collaborators, a new research network, Economic Research on Identity, Norms, and Narratives (ERINN). Rachel Kranton earned her Ph.D. in Economics at the University California, Berkeley in 1993.  She has held fellowships at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  She joined Duke University’s faculty in 2007 and served as Dean of Social Sciences in Duke’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences from 2018-2022.

See her curriculum vitae for a full list of publications and activities.