Avi Acharya is a professor of political science at Stanford. He is a political economist and formal political theorist whose work ranges across a diverse set of topics including voting theory, bargaining theory, principal-agent theory, behavioral political economy, distributive politics, and long run development.

Avi’s papers have been published (or are forthcoming) in the leading journals of political science, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, as well as the top journals in economic theory, including Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, and Games and Economic Behavior. His papers have received the Elinor Ostrom Award, the Gosnell Prize, and the Joseph L. Bernd Best Paper Award.

He is the author of two books: Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics (Princeton University Press, 2018), which received the William H. Riker best political economy book award in 2019, and The Cartel System of States: An Economic Theory of International Politics (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

He is an editor at the journal Social Choice and Welfare and an advisory editor at Games and Economic Behavior.

Avi earned his PhD in political economy from Princeton University, and taught in the political science and economics departments of the University of Rochester before coming to Stanford.