Stelios Michalopoulos is the Eastman Professor of Political Economy at Brown University, a Research Associate at the NBER, and a Research Fellow of the CEPR. A native of Argos, Greece, Stelios holds a B.A. and MSc from the Athens University of Economics and Business and a Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University. After completing his doctorate in 2008, he joined the department of economics at Tufts University as an Assistant Professor. In 2010-2011 he was the Deutsche Bank Member at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In the Spring of 2015, he was a visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, in 2016 a visiting Professor at INSEAD, and a Senior Scholar at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank in 2017. Stelios is the recipient of the 2015 Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the recipient of the 2019 Bodossaki Prize in the field of Social Sciences a biennial award bestowed to scientists of Greek origin up to 40 years of age, to reward their commitment and effort in the advancement of science. His work has been funded by the NSF and DFID among others. His primary research interests lie in the intersection of political economy, culture, growth, and comparative development. He has published in leading peer-reviewed economic journals including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.