Rachel Kranton

Rachel Kranton
NationalityAmerican
Academic career
FieldMicroeconomics
Economic Theory
Development Economics
InstitutionDuke University
School or
tradition		Microeconomics
Alma materUC Berkeley (Ph.D.)
Princeton University (M.P.A.)
University of Pennsylvania (B.A.)
AwardsFellow Econometric Society

Member National Academy of Sciences

Member American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Blaise Pascal Chair (2010)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Rachel E. Kranton (born c. 1962) is an American economist and James B. Duke Professor of Economics at Duke University. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Science, Fellow of the Econometric Society, and 2010 recipient of the Blaise Pascal Chair. She was elected to serve on the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association from 2015 to 2018. Kranton's research focuses on how social institutions affect economic outcomes, and has applications in a variety of fields within economics, such as economic development, international economics, and industrial organization.

More specifically, Kranton studies social networks and develops formal theories of how social networks affect economic behavior,[1][2] the effects of buyer-seller networks,[3][4] institutions in colonial India,[5][6] and reciprocal exchange.[7] By this, she's a major contributor to the emerging new field of economics of networks. She uses formal models of strategic interaction in select economic settings, and draws on these findings through mathematical tools to find how network structures influence economic outcomes. She also focuses on the cost and benefits of networks and informal exchange, which is the economic activity through social relationship.

In a long-term collaboration, Kranton and George Akerlof of University of California, Berkeley introduce social identity into formal economic analysis.[8][9][10][11] In 2010, Akerlof and published Identity Economics, which provides a comprehensive and accessible discussion of their research.[12] In a review for Science, Robert Sugden writes: "Nonspecialist readers will find a lot of insightful and well-informed analysis of how issues of identity affect real economic problems."[13] Bloomberg lists Identity Economics as one of the top 30 business books of 2010.[14]

  1. ^ Bramoullé, Yann; Kranton, Rachel (July 2007). "Public goods in networks". Journal of Economic Theory. 135 (1): 478–494. doi:10.1016/j.jet.2006.06.006.
  2. ^ Bramoullé, Yann; Kranton, Rachel (November 2007). "Risk-sharing networks". Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 64 (3–4): 275–294. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2006.10.004.
  3. ^ Kranton, Rachel E; Minehart, Deborah F (1 June 2001). "A Theory of Buyer-Seller Networks". American Economic Review. 91 (3): 485–508. doi:10.1257/aer.91.3.485. hdl:10161/1735.
  4. ^ Rachel Kranton and Deborah Minehart, "Competition for Goods in Buyer-Seller Networks," Review of Economic Design, 5 (3), September 2000, pp. 301–31.
  5. ^ Rachel Kranton and Anand Swamy, "Contracts, Hold-Up, and Exports: Textiles and Opium in Colonial India," American Economic Review 98 (3), June 2008, pp. 967–89.
  6. ^ "The Hazards of Piecemeal Reform: British Civil Courts and the Credit Market in Colonial India," Rachel Kranton and Anand Swamy, Journal of Development Economics, 58 (1), February 1999, pp. 1–24.
  7. ^ Rachel Kranton, "Reciprocal Exchange: A Self-Sustaining System," American Economic Review, 86 (4), September 1996, pp. 830–51.
  8. ^ Akerlof, G. and R. Kranton, "Economics and Identity," Quarterly Journal of Economics CVX (3), August 2000, pp. 715–53.
  9. ^ Akerlof, G. and R. Kranton, "Identity and the Economics of Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives 19 (1), Winter 2005, pp. 9–32.
  10. ^ Akerlof, G. and R. Kranton, "Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons for the Economics of Education," Journal of Economic Literature, 40 (4), December 2002, pp. 1167–201.
  11. ^ Akerlof, G. and R. Kranton, "Identity, Supervision, and Work Groups," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 98 (2), May 2008, pp. 212–17.
  12. ^ Akerlof, G. and R. Kranton, Identity Economics, Princeton University Press, 2010.
  13. ^ Sugden, Robert (2010), Science 21, Vol. 328 no. 5981, p. 978.
  14. ^ "Favorite 30 Business Books, From 'Adam Smith' to 'The Zeroes'". Bloomberg.com. 2010-11-16. Retrieved 2023-06-02.