Suresh Naidu
1990s Webpage Haver
Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics
Professor of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University Department of Economics/SIPA (On sabbatical 26/27 AY).
sn2430 |at| columbia |dot| edu
More high-resolution headshot here
A CV is here
A Bio is here
A Google Scholar profile is here
Popular/Unpopular/Non-Academic Writing
Teaching
Some Academic Papers
Winning Is Contagious: Social Learning and the Dynamics of Union Support with Ellora Derenoncourt, Arindrajit Dube, Niha Singh, and Heather Sarsons.
Why Join The Union? Gift-Exchange and Free-Riding Among Homecare Workers with Nikita Raheja, Niha Singh, and Aaron Sojourner.
The Worker's Brain Under the Expert's Cap: Occupation Codes, Tacit Knowledge, and the Wage Structure with Gina Markov and Emma Tristan Du Puy.
Monopsony Makes It Big with Sydnee Caldwell and Arindrajit Dube.
Forthcoming Journal of Economic Literature.
The Cold War and the U.S. Labor Market with Ilyana Kuziemko and Danny Oronato.
The Costs and Benefits of Guest Worker Programs:Experimental Evicence from the India-UAE Migration Corridor with Yaw Nyarko and Shing-Yi Wang.
Conditionally Accepted, Journal of European Economics Association.
Power and Dignity in the Low-Wage Labor Market: Evidence From Walmart Workers with Arindrajit Dube and Adam Reich
Working Paper
Compensate The Losers? Economic Policy and Partisan Realignment in the United States with Ilyana Kuziemko and Nicolas Longuet Marx
Forthcoming Quarterly Journal of Economics.
The Economic Geography of American Slavery with Treb Allen and Winston Chen
Revise and Resubmit Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Climate Politics In the United States with Matilde Bombardini, Frederico Finan, Nicolas Longuet-Marx, and Francesco Trebbi.
Working Paper
Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining with Benjamin Arold, Elliott Ash, and Bentley Macleod
Revise and Resubmit Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Ideas Have Consequences:The Effect of Law and Economics on American Justice with Elliott Ash and Daniel Chen
Quarterly Journal of Economics 2025
Monopsony and Employer Misoptimization Explain Why Wages Bunch At Round Numbers with Arindrajit Dube and Alan Manning
American Economic Review 2025.
Collective Bargaining, Unions, and the Wage Structure: An International Perspective with
Simon Jager and Benjamin Schoefer
Handbook of Labor Economics
Between Government and Market: The Political Economics of Labor Unions with Ethan Kaplan
Annual Reviews of Economics.
Review of "The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order" by Gary Gerstle with Ilyana Kuziemko.
Journal of Economic Literature.
Workplace Networks and the Dynamics of Worker Organizing with Hana Sheperd, Rebecca Roskil, and Adam Reich.
Sociological Science 2025
Mobility For All:Representative Intergenerational Mobility Estimates Over The 20th Century. with Ilyana Kuziemko and Elisa Jácome
Journal of Political Economy 2025
Political Language in Economics with Zubin Jelveh and Bruce Kogut.
Economic Journal 2024
If You Don't Like This Job, You Can Always Quit? with Michael Carr
Journal of Law and Political Economy
Is There A Future For The U.S. Labor Movement?
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Economics After Neoliberalism with Dani Rodrik and Gabriel Zucman
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. See Boston Review version with responses here.
Labour Market Power and American Slavery
Economic History of Developing Countries. This paper is based on the LEAP lecture I gave in Stellenbosch in 2019, video here
Text-based Ideal Points with David Blei and Keyon Vafa
Schooled by Strikes? The Effects of Large-Scale Labor Unrest on Mass
Attitudes Towards the Labor Movement with Alex Hertel-Fernandez and Adam Reich
Perspectives on Politics
Do Americans Want to Tax Capital? Evidence from Online Surveys with Ray Fisman, Keith Gladstone, and Ilyana Kuziemko
Journal of Public Economics
Contested Property: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum South with Jeremiah Dittmar (in Progress)
Labor Market Power And the Limits of the Law with Eric Posner
Journal of Human Resources
Monopsony in Movers: The Elasticity of Labor Supply
to Firm Wage Policies with Ihsaan Bassier and Arindrajit Dube
Journal of Human Resources
Unions and Inequality in the 20th Century: New Evidence From Survey Data with Hank Farber, Daniel Herbst, and Ilyana Kuziemko.
Quarterly Journal of Economics (but read online Appendix G for the good historical stuff!)
Historical Gallup data on unions available here
Monopsony in Online Labor Markets with Arindrajit Dube, Jeff Jacobs, and Siddarth Suri.
American Economic Review-Insights.
Antitrust Remedies for Labor Market Power with Eric Posner and Glen Weyl
Harvard Law Review. Online Appendix with calibration and model here.
Collective Action and Customer Service in Retail with Adam Reich
Industrial and Labor Relations Review
Review of "Unequal Gains" by Lindert and Williamson
Economic History Review July 2017
The Evolution of Unequal Linguistic Conventions
with Sung-ha Hwang and Samuel Bowles
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings May 2017
Social Conflict and the Evolution of Unequal Conventions
with Sung-ha Hwang and Samuel Bowles
Journal of the European Economics Association
Social Origins of Dictatorships: Theory and Evidence from Haiti
with James Robinson and Lauren Young
American Political Science Review
Labor Market Institutions In The Gilded Age of American Economic History with Noam Yuchtman.
Oxford Handbook of American Economic History, edited by Lou Cain, Price Fishback, and Paul Rhode.
Start-up Nation? Slave Wealth and Entrepreneurship in Civil War Maryland with Felipe Gonzalez and Guillermo Marshall.
Journal of Economic History June 2017
Monopsony Power in Migrant Labor Markets: Evidence from the
United Arab Emirates with Yaw Nyarko and Shing-Yi Wang.
Journal of Political Economy, December 2016.
Democracy Does Cause Growth with Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo, and James Robinson.
Journal of Political Economy, Feb. 20l9
Democracy, Redistribution, and Inequality with Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo, and James Robinson.
Handbook of Income Distribution.
When the Levee Breaks: Black Migration and Economic Development in the American South with Richard Hornbeck
March 2014, American Economic Review
Book Review of "The Thousand Year Flood" by David Welky
August 2013, Journal of Economic History
Political Polarization and the Dynamics of Political Language: Evidence from 130 Years of Partisan Speech with Jacob Jensen, Ethan Kaplan, and Laurence Wilse-Samson
February 2013, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
Suffrage, Schooling, and Sorting in the Post-Bellum U.S. South
Coercive Contract Enforcement:Law and the Labor Market in 19th Century Industrial Britain (with Noam Yuchtman)
February 2013 American Economic Review.
Seeing Like a Moneylender: A review of "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
August 2012 Journal of Global History.
Bases, Bullets, and Ballots: The Effect of U.S. Military Aid on Political Conflict in Colombia (with Oeindrila Dube)
Journal of Politics.
Replication package here
An exchange with Andrew Gelman over this paper is here
An interview in El Espectador about the U.S. aid to Colombia is here
A column in Slate about this paper is here
Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information (with Arin Dube and Ethan Kaplan)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2011
A column in Slate about this paper is here.
A note fixing some typos.
Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, Michael Gurven, Kim Hill, Paul L. Hooper, William Irons, Hillard Kaplan, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi Low, Frank Marlowe, Richard McElreath, Suresh Naidu, David Nolin, Patrizio Piraino, Rob Quinlan, Eric Schniter, Rebecca Sear, Mary Shenk, Eric Alden Smith, Christopher von Rueden, and Polly Wiessner
Science October 2009.
Recruitment Restrictions and Labor Markets: Evidence from the Post-Bellum U.S. South
Journal of Labor Economics April 2010.
Economic Determinants of Land Invasions (with Danny Hidalgo, Simeon Nichter, and Neal Richardson)
Review of Economics and Statistics August 2010.
The Price of Fertility: Marriage Market Effects of A Family Planning Experiment in Bangladesh (with Raj Arunachalam)
Evolutionary Bargaining with Intentional Idiosyncratic Play (with Sung-Ha Hwang and Samuel Bowles)
Economics Letters 2010
The Economic Impacts of a Citywide Minimum Wage (with Arin Dube and Michael Reich)
Industrial and Labor Relations Review 2007