Chris Blattman

Blattman was born in Canada and holds US citizenship; from 1993 to 1998 he studied economics at the University of Waterloo.⁠[1]

He says that before academia he was a business consultant and an accountant at Deloitte & Touche, and also worked as a rock-climbing instructor and music store salesman and spent two years cooking chicken at KFCKFCKFC (originally Kentucky Fried Chicken) is a global fast-food chain owned by Yum! Brands that specializes in fried chicken. It grew out of a roadside restaurant run by Harland Sanders in Corbin, Kentucky, and as of June 2026 had more than 34,000 restaurants in more than 150 countries.Open the full entry.⁠[2]

He received a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2002 and a PhD in economics from the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, in 2007.⁠[3]

From 2007 to 2008 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Global Development.⁠[1]

From 2008 to 2012 he was an assistant professor of political science at Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry.⁠[4]

In May 2009 he published “From Violence to Voting: War and Political Participation in Uganda” in the American Political Science Review (vol. 103, no. 2), using quasi-experimental variation from rebel recruitment by abduction in northern Uganda to find that abduction substantially increased ex-combatants’ voting and community leadership, largely because of the violence they witnessed.⁠[5]

In 2010 he and Edward Miguel published the survey “Civil War” in the Journal of Economic Literature, reviewing research on the causes and consequences of civil war and noting that low per capita income and slow growth are robustly linked to civil war but that there is little consensus on the most effective policies to avert conflict or promote recovery.⁠[6]

He then taught at Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry’s School of International and Public Affairs and Department of Political Science, most recently as an associate professor.⁠[4]

In 2014 he, Nathan Fiala and Sebastian Martinez published a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics evaluating a Ugandan government program that gave groups of young adults in the conflict-affected north unsupervised grants of $382 per member for vocational training and business start-up; after four years recipients had 57% more business assets, worked 17% more hours and earned 38% more, with no effect on social cohesion or protest.⁠[7]

On May 31, 2016, the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy announced that Blattman and Oeindrila Dube would be the inaugural named professors of the new Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, with Blattman named the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies; the institute grew out of a $100 million gift.⁠[8]

He said he was drawn by the university’s legacy of bringing hard-nosed social science to big real-world problems.⁠[8]

In 2017 he, Julian Jamison and Margaret Sheridan published a study in the American Economic Review in which criminally engaged men in Liberia were randomly offered eight weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy and $200 grants; cash alone or therapy alone initially reduced crime and violence but faded, while cash following therapy cut crime and violence dramatically for at least a year.⁠[9]

On April 3, 2022, he appeared on episode 273 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, which introduces him as a University of Chicago professor studying the causes and consequences of violence and war; topics included justifications for war, the war in Ukraine, nuclear war, drug cartels, Joseph Kony, the world wars, civil wars, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and China versus the US.⁠[10]

On April 19, 2022, Viking published his 400-page Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace. He argues that war is relatively rare because “Even the bitterest enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace.”⁠[11]

Summarizing the book, he groups the reasons for war into five ways a society or its leaders come to ignore the costs of fighting, among them unchecked interests, intangible or ideological incentives and uncertainty; he recalls witnessing war’s destruction in northern Uganda, where children were abducted by rebels and the population was forced into camps by the government.⁠[12]

In June 2022 he noted on his blog that the book was named a Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times (FT) is a London-based English-language business and financial news organization, known for its salmon-pink newspaper and its motto “Without Fear and Without Favour.” It was owned successively by the British Pearson group and Japan’s Nikkei Inc., and today digital subscriptions are its main source of revenue.Open the full entry best summer book of 2022.⁠[13]

In May 2022 he and co-authors released a working paper following 999 high-risk Liberian men ten years after randomization, finding that those who received therapy or therapy plus cash were about half as likely as the control group to engage in antisocial behaviors such as robbery, drug selling and street fights, far exceeding expert predictions.⁠[14]

In January 2023 he, Monica Bhatt, Sara Heller and others released results of a randomized trial of the READI Chicago program, which offered an 18-month job with cognitive behavioral therapy (N = 2,456); after 20 months the primary index of serious violence showed no statistically significant change, but shooting and homicide arrests fell 65%, with significant declines among participants referred by outreach workers.⁠[15]

On July 25, 2024, the Review of Economic Studies accepted “Gang rule: Understanding and countering criminal governance,” written with Gustavo Duncan, Benjamin Lessing and Santiago Tobón; using interviews and a geographic discontinuity in Medellín, Colombia, it finds that gangs closer to state security developed more governance over time to protect drug rents from police.⁠[16]

His research focuses on armed groups, gangs, organized crime and the people who join violent organizations, combining qualitative interviews, large-scale surveys, statistical analysis and field experiments.⁠[2]

He leads Innovations for Poverty Action’s Peace & Recovery program and J-PAL’s Crime and Violence Initiative, and has advised the World Bank, the United Nations and several governments.⁠[4]

Personal website: Public link: https://chrisblattman.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/cblatts (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

Yale University: Official website: https://www.yale.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

Columbia University: Official website: https://www.columbia.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]

University of Chicago: Official website: https://www.uchicago.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]