About

Christopher Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict studies at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. As an economist and political scientist, he uses field study, surveys, natural experiments, and field experiments to study the dynamics of poverty and participation, and to consider which development programs work and why. A number of studies are presently underway in Uganda and Liberia, where he is exploring new strategies to alleviate poverty and is exploring how these strategies impact violence, unrest, and other social and political behavior. He has published articles in prominent journals such as the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Perspectives, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Review of Economics and Statistics. Previously, Blattman was a business consultant and an accountant at Deloitte & Touche. He then served as an assistant professor of political science and economics at Yale University and most recently as an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Department of Political Science. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree in public administration and international development from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Demography
• Criminology
• Econometrics
• Finance
• Law and economics
• Public economics
• Geography
• Demographic economics
• Labour economics
• Environmental health
• Law
• Microeconomics
• Medicine
• Business

Selected publications

• Does alleviating poverty increase cognitive performance? Short- and long-term evidence from a randomized controlled trial

  UNC Libraries · 2025-04-08

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Preventing criminal recruitment and careers: An Evaluation of the Parceritos program in Medellin, Colombia

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-02-28

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Preventing criminal recruitment and careers: An Evaluation of the Parceritos program in Medellin, Colombia

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-02-28

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Employment and Earnings of Men at High Risk of Gun Violence

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2024-05-01

  articleSenior author

  Since Becker (1968), economists have modeled crime as resulting from higher returns to criminal activity than legal work. Yet contemporary employment data for people engaged in crime is scarce. We surveyed men at extreme risk of gun violence in Chicago about their work in the formal, informal, and criminal sectors. Noncriminal work is common. Two-thirds of respondents specialize solely in the criminal or noncriminal sectors, both earning about minimum wage at the median. Those who mix across sectors typically earn higher wages. We describe workers by type to demonstrate how better understanding sectoral specialization could inform program design.

  PublisherDOI

• Criminal malpractice: Why cities can’t copy their way to security

  2024-11-09

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  International drug trafficking dominates discussions of organized crime, yet urban criminal groups that focus on dominating local markets, neighborhoods, and politics are equally common and serious. When policymakers do pay attention, they consistently repeat a critical mistake—assuming universal best practices exist—leading to ineffective or harmful interventions. But systems of organized crime are not all alike. There is no single blueprint or general solution; thus, following the latest policy fad rarely delivers desired outcomes. Instead of copying high-profile but context-specific successes like Giuliani’s New York or Bukele’s El Salvador, policymakers must first understand their city’s specific organized crime problem, their local capabilities, and the tools most appropriate for their circumstances. This paper examines how organized crime has structured itself in Chicago, Medellín, El Salvador, New York, Bogotá, and Port-au-Prince. I argue the primary driver of these organizations and their behavior is their criminal revenue source. A second major driver is their degree of hierarchical organization, which ranges from atomized individuals and freelance cliques (prone to sporadic violence), to fragmented firms (profit-driven, volatile), competing confederations (internally peaceful but externally violent), and city-wide cartels (internally stable, politically influential). These forms emerge not just from their criminal revenue sources but also from decades-long competition among groups and with the state. Effective policy tools hinge on accurately diagnosing this local context. Reviewing evidence for various standard interventions—from crackdowns to street outreach—I explain why their impacts vary dramatically depending on the organizational environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Eat Widely, Vote Wisely: Lessons from a Campaign Against Vote Buying in Uganda

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study a large-scale intervention designed by civil society organizations to reduce vote buying in Uganda’s 2016 elections. We study this intervention in light of a model where incumbents benefit from a first-mover and valence advantage, vote buying and campaigning are complementary, and voter reciprocity increases the effectiveness of vote buying. The intervention undermined reciprocity as well as the valence advantage of incumbents. As a result, challengers not only campaigned more intensively but also bought more votes in treated locations. Consistent with incumbents being first movers in markets for votes and facing more frictions to adjust their strategies than challengers, their response to the intervention was limited. The intervention ultimately failed to reduce vote buying, but led to short-run electoral gains for challengers and increased service delivery in treated locations.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding reporting behavior on gang extortion: A survey experiment in Medelln

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2024-11-11

  dataset
  PublisherDOI

• Understanding reporting behavior on gang extortion: A survey experiment in Medelln

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2024-11-11

  dataset
  PublisherDOI

• Gang Rule: Understanding and Countering Criminal Governance

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2024-09-05 · 36 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Criminal groups govern millions worldwide. Even in strong states, gangs resolve disputes and provide security. Why do these duopolies of coercion emerge? Often, gangs fill vacuums of official power, suggesting that increasing state presence should crowd out criminal governance. We show, however, that state and gang rule can be strategic complements. In particular, gangs could minimize seizures and arrests by keeping neighbourhoods orderly and loyal. If true, increasing state presence could increase incentives for gang rule. In Medellín, Colombia, criminal leaders told us they rule to protect drug rents from police. We test gang responses to state presence using a geographic discontinuity. Internal border changes in 1987 assigned blocks to be closer or further from state security for three decades. Gangs exogenously closer to state presence developed more governance over time. They primarily did so in neighbourhoods with the greatest potential drug rents. This suggests new strategies for countering criminal governance.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Place-Based Interventions at Scale: The Direct and Spillover Effects of Policing and City Services on Crime

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-08-03

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is the replication package for “Place-Based Interventions at Scale: The Direct and Spillover Effects of Policing and City Services on Crime,” by Christopher Blattman, Donald P Green, Daniel Ortega, and Santiago Tobón. This folder contains all the data and code necessary for replicating tables and figures in the paper. The data files are in Stata (.dta) format, and the replication code was written in Stata. For more information on the data or code, please see the readme.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Edward Miguel

  849 shared

• Michal Bauer

  845 shared

• Joseph Henrich

  Harvard University

  843 shared

• Julie Chytilová

  842 shared

• Tamar Mitts

  Columbia University

  841 shared

• Benjamin Marx

  Center for Economic and Policy Research

  174 shared

• Horacio Larreguy

  174 shared

• Otis Reid

  174 shared

Labs

• Harris School of Public PolicyPI

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of California at Berkeley

• M.A., Public Administration and International Development

  Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government

Awards & honors

• NIHCM Foundation Research Award (2018)