{"id":2,"date":"2012-01-18T16:04:02","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T16:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:45:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:45:27","slug":"sample-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/?page_id=2","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I teach economics in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences<\/a> at the Toulouse School of Economics<\/a> and have lived in the centre of the city of Toulouse<\/a> in France since 2000. I was Director from 2012 to 2021 of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST<\/a>) of which I remain a member. From October 2021 to September 2023 I held a Two-Year Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>I did undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Oxford<\/a>, where I was a Fellow of All Souls College<\/a>, then taught at the University of Cambridge<\/a> where I was a Fellow of Churchill College<\/a>. I have also held part-time teaching positions at the College of Europe<\/a> in Bruges and at the Ecole Polytechnique<\/a> in Paris.<\/p>\n

My research lies in the areas of economic theory and industrial organization, the evolution of human behavior, gender economics, the economics of religion and political economy. A common theme to these apparently chaotically diverse topics is the foundations of human cooperation and social trust: I examine the way in which our prehistorically evolved psychology interacts with modern institutions to make social cooperation possible.<\/p>\n

My Google Scholar page is here<\/a>, and my Wikipedia page is here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have done field research in many countries around the world, including Cameroon, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ghana, Haiti, Hungary, India, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

My book The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People<\/a>, published by Princeton University Press in May 2024, brings together my interests in industrial economics (specifically the economics of platforms) and my fascination for behavioural and evolutionary economics. Two earlier books published by PUP, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life<\/a> (2010) and The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present<\/a> (2012) also explored the confrontation of a psychology shaped by evolution with modern social and economic institutions. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Guido Friebel<\/a> and I have just (in April 2026) reached agreement with Polity Press for the publication of our book Leaders Who Lose It: Dementia, Power and the Case for an Age Limit<\/em>, to appear in January 2027.<\/p>\n

I am a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research<\/a>, London, and of the European Economic Association<\/a>. I was formerly a member of the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy<\/a> at DG-Competition of the European Commission, and a member (and later chair) of the Scientific Council of the think-tank BRUEGEL<\/a>. From 2005 to 2019 I was an almost annual visitor at the Santa Fe Institute<\/a> in Santa Fe, New Mexico.<\/p>\n

My literary agent is Catherine Clarke at Felicity Bryan<\/a> in Oxford. You can find details of my previous books here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Download my C.V.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I teach economics in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the Toulouse School …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"template-post-gallery.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":66,"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3355,"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/3355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulseabright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}