About

Bryony Reich is an Assistant Professor in the Strategy department at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Her research interests include microeconomic theory, networks, and political economy. Her work focuses on understanding how societies coordinate and cooperate, and how social networks influence economic outcomes and behavior. Prior to joining Kellogg, Professor Reich was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Economics at University College London and received her PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Law
• Computer Science
• Political economy
• Computer Security
• Development economics
• Market economy
• Economic growth
• Finance
• Demography
• Public administration

Selected publications

• What Motivates Leaders to Invest in Nation-Building?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-07-01 · 3 citations

  report

  of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-

  PublisherDOI

• Wealth Dynamics in Communities

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2022 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Economics
  • Finance

  Abstract This article develops a model to explore how favour exchange influences wealth dynamics. We identify a key obstacle to wealth accumulation: wealth crowds out favour exchange. Therefore, households must choose between growing their wealth and accessing favour exchange. We show that low-wealth households rely on favour exchange at the cost of having tightly limited long-term wealth. As a result, initial wealth disparities persist and can even grow worse. We then explore how communities and policymakers can overcome this obstacle. Using simulations, we show that community benefits and place-based policies can stimulate both saving and favour exchange, and in some cases, can even transform favour exchange into a force that accelerates wealth accumulation.

  PublisherDOI

• What Motivates Leaders to Invest in Nation-Building?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Nation-Building and Education

  The Economic Journal · 2021 · 105 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract Democracies and dictatorships have different incentives when it comes to choosing how much and by what means to homogenise the population, i.e., ‘to build a nation’. We study and compare nation-building policies under the transition from dictatorship to democracy in a model where the type of government and borders of the country are endogenous. We find that the threat of democratisation provides the strongest incentive to homogenise. We focus upon a specific nation-building policy: mass primary education. We offer historical discussions of nation-building across time and space, and provide correlations for a large sample of countries over the 1925–2014 period.

  PublisherDOI

• Nation-building, nationalism, and $$\hbox {wars}^*$$

  Journal of Economic Growth · 2020 · 65 citations

  • Political Science
  • Political economy
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2017-05-01 · 24 citations

  reportOpen access

  The increase in army size observed in early modern times changed the way states conducted wars. Starting in the late 18th century, states switched from mercenaries to a mass army by conscription. In order for the population to accept to fight and endure war, the government elites began to provide public goods, reduced rent extraction and adopted policies to homogenize the population with nation-building. This paper explores a variety of ways in which nation-building can be implemented and studies its effects as a function of technological innovation in warfare.

  PublisherDOI

• Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2017-05-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  This paper explores how the increase in army size observed in early modern times changed the way states conducted wars. Starting in the late 18th century, states switched from mercenaries to a mass army by conscription. We model the incentives of soldiers to exert effort in war and show that as army size increases paying mercenaries is no longer optimal. In order for the population to accept fighting in and enduring war, government elites began to provide public goods, reduced rent extraction, and adopted policies to homogenize the population. We also explore the variety of ways in which homogenization can be implemented, and study its e ects as a function of technological innovation in warfare.

  Publisher

• Melting pot or salad bowl: the formation of heterogeneous communities

  2015-10-07 · 25 citations

  preprint1st authorCorresponding

  Relatively little is known about what determines whether a heterogenous population ends up in a cooperative or divisive situation. This paper proposes a theoretical model to understand what social structures arise in heterogeneous populations. Individuals face a trade-off between cultural and economic incentives: an individual prefers to maintain his cultural practices, but doing so can inhibit interaction and economic exchange with those who adopt different practices. We find that a small minority group will adopt majority cultural practices and integrate. In contrast, minority groups above a certain critical mass, may retain diverse practices and may also segregate from the majority. The size of this critical mass depends on the cultural distance between groups, the importance of culture in day to day life, and the costs of forming a social tie. We test these predictions using data on migrants to the United States in the era of mass migration, and find support for the existence of a critical mass of migrants above which social structure in heterogeneous populations changes discretely towards cultural distinction and segregation.

  PublisherDOI

• Nation-Building and Education

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2013-02-01 · 30 citations

  reportSenior author

  Nations stay together when citizens share enough values and preferences and can communicate with each other. Democracies and dictatorships have different incentives when it comes to choosing how much and by what means to homogenize the population, i.e. “to build a nation”. We study and compare nation-building policies under the transition from dictatorship to democracy in a model where the location and type of government and the borders of the country are endogenous. We find that the threat of democratization provides the strongest incentive to homogenize. We focus upon a specific nation-building policy: the provision of mass primary education. As a motivation, we offer historical discussions of several episodes in the nineteenth century and suggestive correlations for a large sample of countries over the 1925-2014 period.

  PublisherDOI

• Identity, Community and Segregation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2010-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Alberto Alesina

  Harvard University

  7 shared

• Paola Giuliano

  6 shared

• Arun Advani

  University of Warwick

  4 shared

• Alessandro Riboni

  Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique

  4 shared

• Yingni Guo

  1 shared

• Daniel Barron

  Kellogg's (Canada)

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Excellence in Refereeing for the Economic Journal
• Net Institute Summer Research Grant
• Future Research Leaders Grant, UK Economic and Social Resear…