Paul Seabright

Paul Seabright is a Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, Toulouse Capitole University, where he has taught since 2000. He served as Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) from 2012 to 2021 and was on sabbatical at the University of Oxford during 2021-22 as a Fellow of All Souls College.

His educational background includes:

• Undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Oxford (Fellow of All Souls College)
• Teaching position at the University of Cambridge (Fellow of Churchill College)
• Part-time roles at the College of Europe in Bruges and École Polytechnique in Paris

Seabright's research spans three core areas:

• Industrial organization and competition policy
• Economics of networks and digital society
• Behavioral economics integrating evolutionary biology and anthropology with long-run institutional development

He is currently writing The Origins of Enchantment: How Religions Compete under contract with Princeton University Press.

His recent publications reveal consistent focus on institutional responses to social challenges, with recurring themes in religion-economics intersections (50% of listed works), pandemic management, and evolutionary perspectives on social norms. Key methodological approaches include behavioral experiments, institutional analysis, and digital data mining.

As former Director of IAST, he led interdisciplinary initiatives connecting economics with anthropology and biology. Current projects explore religious competition dynamics and long-term institutional evolution, often leveraging digital society frameworks for analysis of traditional economic questions.