Claudia Rei

Claudia Rei is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, holding a position in the Department of Economics. She serves as Deputy Head of Department (Teaching and Learning), reflecting her administrative leadership in academic governance. Her research focuses on Economic History, Applied Microeconomics, and Political Economy, with particular emphasis on merchant empires, colonial institutions, and historical labor markets.

Rei’s work bridges cliometrics and institutional analysis, examining topics like organizational structures of Portuguese and Dutch trading empires, migration patterns during the Holocaust, and labor dynamics in early modern corporations. She contributes to the CAGE Research Centre and engages with professional societies including the Cliometric Society and Economic History Association. Her teaching includes courses such as EC104: The World Economy: History & Theory and EC991: Topics in Applied Microeconomics.

Key publications include Turning Points in Leadership: Ship Size in the Portuguese and Dutch Merchant Empires (Social Science History, 2024) and Merchant Empires (Handbook of Cliometrics, 2019). She has also authored influential papers on the Dutch East India Company’s wage structures and the health impacts of Holocaust refugee migration.

Her research extends to historical state capacity, as seen in her working paper Priests and Postmen: Historical Origins of National Identity, which links 19th-century religious and postal networks to modern voter behavior. Rei actively participates in academic discourse through book reviews, seminar series co-organization, and collaborations with institutions globally.