Suresh Naidu
Program
Junior Fellow Academy
Appointment
Junior Fellow, Institutions, Organizations and Growth
Institution
Columbia University
Country
USA 
Suresh Naidu is a CIFAR Junior Fellow in the Institutions, Institutions, Organizations and Growth program. He is an Assistant Professor in Economics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In 2010, he finished two years as a Harvard Academy Junior Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Originally from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Suresh obtained a B.Math from the University of Waterloo, a Master’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008.
Suresh is interested in the role of coercion and political violence historically and in developing countries. He has studied land occupations in Brazil, financial market leaks of CIA-sponsored coups in developing countries, and the effects of U.S. military aid on political violence in Colombia. He is currently studying the Haitian oligarchy as well as the recent Maoist violence in eastern India. Suresh also has an interest in the economics of coercive labour markets. For example, English workers were not permitted to leave their employer without permission prior to 1875, and breach of the employment contract was punishable by fines, jail, and even corporal punishment. In the U.S. South after slavery, a related law criminalized employers that attempted to poach black workers who were already under contract. He has also looked more generally at the economic incidence of black disenfranchisement on land and labour in the late 19th century U.S. South, and is currently pursuing a project analyzing the economic effects of variation in the legal security of slave-owner property rights prior to the U.S. Civil War.
Suresh is interested in the role of coercion and political violence historically and in developing countries. He has studied land occupations in Brazil, financial market leaks of CIA-sponsored coups in developing countries, and the effects of U.S. military aid on political violence in Colombia. He is currently studying the Haitian oligarchy as well as the recent Maoist violence in eastern India. Suresh also has an interest in the economics of coercive labour markets. For example, English workers were not permitted to leave their employer without permission prior to 1875, and breach of the employment contract was punishable by fines, jail, and even corporal punishment. In the U.S. South after slavery, a related law criminalized employers that attempted to poach black workers who were already under contract. He has also looked more generally at the economic incidence of black disenfranchisement on land and labour in the late 19th century U.S. South, and is currently pursuing a project analyzing the economic effects of variation in the legal security of slave-owner property rights prior to the U.S. Civil War.