Benjamin Marx

Welcome to my website!

I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at Boston University. I am a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER, a Research Fellow at CEPR, an affiliate of BREAD and J-PAL, and a board member of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE). I also currently serve as an Associate Director of the Human Capital Initiative at Boston University's Global Development Policy Center.

My research interests are at the intersection of political economy and development economics. I study how political, cultural, and institutional factors shape the process of economic development. The first strand of my research studies elections and democracy in developing countries and globally. The second strand explores the political economy of religion. The third strand explores questions related to state-building and nation-building in historical perspective. Before joining BU, I received my Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 2018 and worked at the Sciences Po Department of Economics between 2018-2022.