Jason Jackson is Associate Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and director of the Political Economy Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Jason’s research focuses on the relationship between states and markets. It seeks to understand the historical origins and evolution of the institutional arrangements through which states and markets are constituted from the late 19th century to the present. Jason’s work is particularly focused on the role of economic ideas and moral beliefs in shaping market institutions. It assesses the implications of political struggles between business, government and societal actors for market structure and resulting competitive and distributional outcomes. Empirically his work focuses on contexts ranging from the politics of monopoly and foreign investment in India from the late colonial period to the present, to the platform economy and urban mobility markets in contemporary cities in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
He is author of the books, Traders, Speculators and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India (Harvard University Press) and Constructing Economic Nationalisms in Brazil and India (Cambridge University Press). He is currently completing his third book manuscript on Digital Capitalism and the Future of the Global Economy.
Jason completed his Ph.D. in Political Economy at MIT. He also holds an AB in Economics from Princeton University, an MSc in Development Economics from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Select Media and Links
Matters Podcast: Economic Nationalism in India, Brazil, and the United States.
MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future: the comparative political economy of technological change in urban spaces around the globe.
MIT DUSP ‘Planning Ideas that Matter’ Podcast: Urban Science, offering a political economy perspective on the potential impact of machine learning algorithms, artificial intelligence and big data in urban contexts. Hosted by my MIT DUSP colleague Takeo Kuwabara.
University of Chicago, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture’s New Dawn podcast on Race and Capitalism: Episode One. Hosted by Professor Michael Dawson (and with my MIT DUSP colleague Phil Thompson).
JASON JACKSON 