Avidit Acharya

About

Avi Acharya is a senior fellow (courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. Acharya is a professor of political science at Stanford University and a professor, by courtesy, of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He works in the fields of political economy and formal political theory.

His first book, Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics (Princeton University Press, 2018), received the William H. Riker Award for the best book in political economy in 2019. His second book, The Cartel System of States: An Economic Theory of International Politics (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), provides a new understanding of the territorial state system as it developed through time and exists today.

His papers have been published in both economics and political science journals and have received awards such as the Elinor Ostrom Prize for best paper, the Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology , and the Joseph Bernd Best Paper award. He is an editor at the journal Social Choice and Welfare and an advisory editor at Games and Economic Behavior.

He earned a PhD in political economy from Princeton University in 2012 and a BA in economics and mathematics from Yale University in 2006. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he taught in the Economics and Political Science departments of the University of Rochester.