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Gavin Wright

Economics
Ph.D., Yale University, Economics (1969)
M.A., Yale University, Economics (1966)
B.A., Swarthmore College, Economics (1965)
Gavin Wright
Gavin Wright is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History Emeritus at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1982.

Professor Wright received his BA from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, and is a past president of the Economic History Association and the Agricultural History Society. The author of numerous books and articles, Wright was an editor-in-chief for the 5-volume collaborative reference work, Historical Statistics of the United States.

Professor Wright’s research centers on the historical record of the American economy, specifically the institutional and cultural foundations of the country’s rise to world economic pre-eminence. He also has a longstanding interest in the economy of the American South and has published three books on that subject. The most recent is Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South, published by Harvard University Press in 2013. The book was named as a Choice Top 25 Outstanding Academic Title for 2013, and won the Alice Hanson Jones Prize as the best book in North American Economic History 2013-2014. The paperback edition was released in 2018.

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