Oeindrila Dube

Professor Dube studies poverty, violence and crime in countries around the world. 

One strand of her research analyzes how economic shocks shape conflict dynamics. Another strand examines how cognitive factors give rise to violence.

She uses both quasi-experimental and experimental research designs, and draws on a wide variety of sources, including original surveys, hand collected records, and big data to study these questions.

Her work has appeared in leading journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Science, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the American Political Science Review.

Dube holds a number of research affiliations and appointments. She is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) and an affiliate of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. She co-leads the Crime and Violence Initiative at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and the Socio-economic Inequalities Initiative at the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute.

Directly preceding her appointment at the Harris School, Dube was an assistant professor of politics and economics at New York University. Prior to that, she worked at the World Bank, Oxfam International, and the Brookings Institution. 

Dube received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, her M Phil in Economics from Oxford University, and her BA in Public Policy from Stanford University. She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship in 2002.