Gavin Wright

Gavin Wright is an economic historian and the William Robertson Professor of American economic history at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University and has taught at that institution, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Cambridge, and Oxford University.

Wright has published nine books and dozens of scholarly articles. Most of his research has focused on the economics of U.S. Civil War and the Civil Rights movement.

By this expert

How NAFTA Lost Democrats the South

Article | Sep 15, 2020

For thirty years after the Civil Rights Act, a sizable share of white Southerners still voted Democrat. That changed when the party embraced trade deals that hurt American workers.

Voting Rights, Deindustrialization, and Republican Ascendancy in the South

Paper Working Paper Series | | Sep 2020

How NAFTA led to GOP dominance of the American South

Featuring this expert

Race Has a Regional Dimension in America’s Political Economy

Video | Feb 20, 2017

Stanford economic historian Professor Gavin Wright, addressing the Institute’s conference on the economics of race, argues that the conditions facing the children of the great migration from the South are very different to the conditions for the children of those who stayed behind. 

Tomorrow’s Detroits & Detroit’s Tomorrows

Event Conference Race & Economics | Nov 11–12, 2016

Economics has a race problem.