Tom Raster

Dr. Tom Raster is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He holds a PhD and MA from the Paris School of Economics. His research focuses on the intersection of economic history, spatial economics, trade, and labour economics, particularly in Eastern Europe. Key areas include new trade connections, entrepreneurship, forced labor (e.g., serfdom), and historical migration patterns. He is affiliated with Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, LSE's Historical Economic Demography Group, and the World Inequality Lab.

Education: PhD and MA in Economics from Paris School of Economics (France).

Research Interests:

• Historical trade networks and entrepreneurship
• Labour coercion mechanisms (serfdom, forced labor)
• Economic geography and spatial economics
• Long-term effects of plagues and pandemics
• Elite networks and wealth dynamics

Publications and Working Papers: Includes studies on trade pioneers’ impacts, plague effects on serfdom, bourgeois values’ influence on entrepreneurship, and grain trade’s role in labor coercion. His work leverages large-scale archival data, such as Baltic Sea voyages records and serf labor contracts.

Teaching: Convenor of LSE courses on Economic History and Historical Economic Geography. Advises PhD students Eden Lumerman and Johann Ohler. Previously taught at Harvard University and University of British Columbia with strong student evaluations.

Labs/Teams: Active in cross-institutional collaborations including the Baltic Economic History Database project and the World Inequality Lab. Research interests extend to EU cabotage laws’ environmental impacts and long-run political effects of WWII refugees.